The main tool of the alligator is a large, flexible and strong tail. It is almost half the length of the body. The tail of the alligator is controlled as a universal tool. The tail is the main means of swimming and a powerful weapon in the fight. Tail, like a shovel, he arranges nests. Moreover, the tail is the largest in the body of the alligator storage of fat stores for the winter period. Alligators are excellent swimmers, afloat they use their powerful tail as a rowing oar. On land, they also move quite quickly. For short distances can develop a speed of up to 20 km / h.
Reptiles eat everything that they can catch, these are any animals and fish, fruits and leaves of plants. Young eat snails, crayfish, turtles and insects. Adults prefer large prey. Hunt for raccoons, platypuses, skunks, deer, wild pigs, cows and even small bears. They have a peculiar tactic of hunting. They can wait for hours, hiding in the water, so that only eyes and nostrils look to the surface. When the production is nearby, the alligator throws himself forward with a tail, suffices neither that unsuspecting animal with its huge mouth and drags from the shore.
Rotating around its axis, it drowns it in water, and then tears the carcass into parts, presses its jaws and swallows it in large pieces. Small animals such as muskrats, nutria, dogs, rats and birds alligators are swallowed whole. Turtles, snakes and lizards, too, are moving into action. They crumble hard shells with their teeth. You can wait for an alligator for hours, and attack and drown in just a few seconds. In a hungry time, do not disdain and carrion. Hunts usually at night, and during the day or are heated in the sun or fall asleep in burrows.
Alligators are lonely. Having mastered the territory, large individuals protect it from encroachment of relatives, while showing aggression. On the contrary, young individuals are kept in small groups.
The most active alligators in the summer, and with a cooling prepare places for wintering. On the coast, they tear out holes up to a half and a length of about 10 meters, in which several animals are located at once. Some for the winter just burrow into the mud, leaving on the surface only nostrils for the ability to breathe. During hibernation, they do not eat, but survive at the expense of fat accumulated over the summer. Sometimes in these areas the temperature in winter reaches minus temperature, but even freezing alligators tolerate quite normally.
