Chinese alligator

Appearance

The Chinese alligator is almost completely black or dark gray in color as an adult. It has a short and broad snout, that points slightly upwards and narrows at the end. It contains up to 17 rows of scales across its body, that are soft on its belly and side and rougher on its back.

One of the smallest species of crocodilians, the Chinese alligator attains a length of 1.5–2.1 metres (5–7 ft) and weight of 36–45 kilograms (80–100 lb) as an adult.

Females are roughly three-quarters the length of males. It is less than half the size of the American alligator, that typically grows to a length of 3.4 metres (11.2 ft) for males and 2.5 metres (8.2 ft) for females.

Range and habitat

The Chinese alligator usually lives in bodies of fresh water, particularly wetlands and ponds, in areas transitioning between subtropical and temperate climates. It lives at the base of mountains, in areas where grass and shrubs are common. Habitat loss has also forced it to live at higher elevations than it prefers, where the weather is colder and the soil is unfit for burrow digging.

A survey of the population by the Anhui National Nature Reserve for Chinese Alligator (ANNRCA) in 2005 deduced that between 92 and 114 adults and 66 young remained in the wild. In 1982, the Anhui National Nature Reserve for Chinese Alligator (ANNRCA) was created, a reserve spanning across the entire range of the Chinese alligator, now covering an area of 18,565 hectares (45,880 acres).

Pins are Wikidata “endemic to” fields. Orange dots, when present, are GBIF occurrence tiles — survey bias included.

Diet and breeding

It is nocturnal throughout summer, feeding at night and sheltering in the daytime, to avoid both humans and the summer heat. The breeding season of the Chinese alligator is early summer, with the rate of mating being highest in mid-June.

The alligator breeds earlier in the year if temperatures are higher. During the time of mating, males commonly search around ponds to find a mate and both male and female specimens are often aggressive to each other.

In crisis

Originally living as far away from its current range as Japan, the species previously had a wide range and population, but beginning in 6000 BC, multiple threats, such as habitat destruction, caused the species' population and range to decline. The population in the wild was about 1,000 in the 1970s, decreased to below 130 in 2001, and grew after 2003, with its population being about 300 as of 2017. The population of the Chinese alligator began to decline in 5000 BC, when human civilization started to grow in China, after having been very abundant in the lower Yangtze area.

By the 1970s, it was restricted to small parts of southern Anhui and Zhejiang, at that time the population was about 1,000. In 1998, the population of the Chinese alligator was the lowest it had ever been. The largest area it lived in was a small pond along the Yangtze surrounded by farmland, that held 11 alligators.

CITES lists this taxon on Appendix I. Confirm the current appendix on the CITES checklist.

Chinese alligator is Critically Endangered on this catalog because that is the IUCN category stored on Wikidata. Confirm the official criteria and any later count on iucnredlist.org.

Sources

Written for this catalog from the English Wikipedia article on Chinese alligator, Wikidata item Q194422. Family and order context is original field-guide writing about the group, not a copied assessment of this one species. Wikipedia text is CC BY-SA. Not an IUCN assessment. Counts, when quoted, can change — confirm them on the recovery programme and on iucnredlist.org.