Observations on Territoriality in Alligator mississippiensis, the American Alligator, and Other Points Concerning its Habits and Conservation

Reasons are given for believing that charging alligators are serious, especially a t their nests and in group defense of the young, rather than going through a “ritualized bluff.” Observations are presented describing the actions of competing alligators and the establishment of territories between them in Mississippi brackish waters. Recent history has shown that alligators can live in natural streams and habitats close to human habitation, if they are not molested. The writer suggests that they should be removed from such environments when they attain a length of nine t o ten feet because a t that size they become dangerous. If man exterminates himself the various crocodilian species may survive for another quarter of a billion years as their ancestors have in the past. In the early 1920’s when Percy Viosca (1925) was prowling in a Louisiana swamp one night catching frogs with a carbide light, he was so threatened by a huge alligator that by his own admission he was temporarily scared out of his wits. In view of some questions raised about alligator behavior by Viosca and by others since that time, his account is worth further discussion even at this late date. In spite ofhis cavalier manner of pointing at an unlabeled specimen in a bottle and saying thirty years k%r, for instance, I caught that snake on the Robeline road five miles west of Natchitoches on July 3, 1931, Viosca was widely recognized as a most careful field herpetologist (cf. Neill 1970, p. 65). In the encounter described he established the fact that he was dealing with a very large and very shy and furtive alligator which apparently practiced complete avoidance of man when possible. Nevertheless, this beast (or another one exactly like it) charged from about 10 yards when Viosca scooped up two baby alligators about one foot long, and they gave the distress noise which he described as a grunt, umph, umph.” He thought this call was answered by the large animal before it charged, but he was not sure because of the subsequent excitement. He ran several yards through the foot-and-a-half deep water, fell over a cypress knee and doused his light. The charging animal did not attack in the dark and he told me many years later, “I never knew why that alligator did not grab me when I fell down.” But there could be several reasons. In the first place the alligator may not have realized it was charging a man until it ran out into the light as Viosca (1925) suggested. Secondly, he threw the little alligators “right in the face” of the charger. No doubt the distress noises then ceased and a powerful stimulus stopped. At almost the same moment complete darkness supervened and the interloper suddenly disappeared from the alligator’s view. This was enough to bemuse a reptilian brain and cause it to cease what it was doing without “ supposing something like the ending of a “ritualized bluff.” Apparently, the idea of a “ritualized bluff‘ arose because of the habits of alligator females of chasing molesters only a short distance away from a nest. The full length of such a run to the longest distance recorded in the literature is about 40 yards (see Kushlan 1973). There are good reasons for short runs. In the first place the alligator is not built t o run a mile. Secondly if one left a nest for long, a second egg stealer might come along. Thus a short run is in the best interest of nest protection. The Everglades Seminoles are said to have a rule that if an alligator is moving, stay out of the way. Several accounts of alligator attacks resulting in serious injury and a few deaths of people have been recorded in recent years (cf. Neill 1970). These all involved hungry animals so far as is known. Anyway it is well known that alligators will bite. To assume that a charging alligator will not bite because it is only bluffing when guarding a nest seems to me, highly dubious. Much more likely such animals are not known to attack successfully only because they have not been known to catch their men, or in one sense their integrity has never been questioned. Viosca said that he was puzzled because there is no real evidence of parental care after the young leave the nest. But the later observations of Joanen (1969) and Kushlan (1973) are good evidence of parental care in the alligator, and since these words were written Hunt (1977) has described the general response of older Morelet’s crocodiles to mistreatment of young by other individuals in experimentally staged situations. There is a growing body of evidence that diverse crocodilians watch out for the young as a group, not just as parents. Furthermore, in some species mothers help the young out of the nest and carry them to water when they hatch, see Hunt (1977) for a literature summary. Viosca’s whole episode could have taken place on the basis of general reaction to a distress noise. Neill (1971)