CHINESE ALLIGATORS: CHARACTERISTICS, BEHAVIOR AND REPRODUCTION

CHINESE ALLIGATORS

Chinese alligator

Chinese alligators (Alligator sinensis) are the smallest crocodilians. They average around two meters (six or seven feet) in length, about half their American counterparts. They are known in China as "tu long," or earth dragon, and may have inspired the dragon myth. In Chinese they are also called T’o; and Yow Lung. Both males and females have lived into their 70s in captivity. [Source: Lauren Groppi, Animal Diversity Web (ADW) /=\; [Source: Carol Kaesuk Yoon, New York Times, August 21, 2001]]

Chinese alligators are also known as Yangtze alligators in English. They are endemic to eastern China and have traditionally been found in the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River and were once found throughout the lakes and rivers in the lower Yangtze basin. Literature describes this species as early as the A.D. third century, including reference that they lived in other areas of China and possibly even Korea and Japan. But now they are only found in small areas in Zhejiang and Anhui Provinces about a 160 kilometers (100 miles) west of Shanghai. In 1998, it was estimated that the geographic range of Chinese alligators had decreased by over ninety percent from what it was in the late 1970s.

Chinese alligators live in a colder climate than other crocodilians and are the only crocodilians that hibernate. They usually hibernate in the winter in complex networks of burrows on the banks of their ponds. Chinese alligators are regarded as relatively mild mannered and non-threatening. They have been described as the most docile crocodilian. There are historical records of them attacking humans but nones in recent decades. They live in wetlands, swamps, ponds, lakes, temporary pools, rivers, streams. and areas adjacent to rivers and other water bodies. They prefer living in lowland wetlands but because of development there are so few places these days where they can live they have begun moving to forests and the slopes of hills, which are not suitable for burrowing. Adults can survive in these places buts eggs and young alligators often die if the weather gets too cold.

Websites and Resources Chinese Alligator Crocodilain Species List flmnh.ufl.edu ; Wikipedia article Wikipedia

Why Are There Alligators in the U.S. and China, but Nowhere Else?

Alligators can be found in just two areas of the world: the southeast United States and China. One person posted on Reddit: “It strikes me as odd that an animal that's been around for hundreds of millions of years would now be limited to just two areas, and that those two areas just happen to be basically on opposite sides of the globe.

Chinese alligator range

One person answered: Fossil alligators in North America predate those in Asia, so as far as we can tell, the genus originated there and dispersed to Asia. The thing is, we don't know exactly how they did that. Neither species can tolerate salt water for very long, so it wasn't an oceanic dispersal. It could have been via Eurasia, but it's typically assumed to be via the Bering Strait.

There are a number of fossil species found farther north in North America, and even a couple from Europe (like Arambourgia and Hassiacosuchus, but these predate the first alligators in China by millions of years, and those Chinese fossils are in the same genus as the alligators found there and in the US today.

As for why they're not found more places, well, we have caimans farther south in the Americas, which are in the same family. Unlike alligators, they're not tolerant of freezing temperatures. Alligators are the only temperate crocodilians and the only who can withstand hard freezes. Their range ends basically where other crocodiles and caimans can survive, so it's thought that they're outcompeted.

Chinese Alligator Characteristics and Diet

Adult Chinese alligators and weigh 36 to 45 kilograms (80 to 100 pounds) and range in length from 1.4 to 2.2 meters (4.6 to 7.2 feet), with their average length being 1.4 to 1.5 meters (4.6 to 4.8 feet). Like most reptiles they are cold blooded (ectothermic, use heat from the environment and adapt their behavior to regulate body temperature) and heterothermic (having a body temperature that fluctuates with the surrounding environment). Sexual Dimorphism (differences between males and females) is present: Males are larger than females. Males have been recorded up to 2.2 meters, with an average size is 1.5 meters. Females have been recorded up to 1.7 meters, averaging around 1.4 meters. [Source: Lauren Groppi, Animal Diversity Web (ADW) /=]

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Chinese alligator Chinese alligators are black or dark, yellowish gray in color with pronounced black spotting of their lower jaw. They have four short limbs with five partially webbed toes and claws on each limb. Their long, thick, muscular tail helps power them when they are in the water. They have osteoderms, dermal bone lying over the skin used as armor, covering both the back and underside of the body. Unlike crocodiles, their fourth mandibular teeth in the lower jaw lie in sockets in the upper jaw, and are unexposed when the jaws are closed. Also characteristic of Chinese alligators is their upturned snout, which is similar to South American caimans. Unlike their closest relatives, American alligators, Chinese alligators have a bony plate in the upper eyelid.

Chinese alligators are carnivores (eat meat or animal parts) and are also recognized as piscivores (eat fish), insectivores (eat insects), and molluscivore (eat mollusks). Animal foods include birds, mammals, reptiles, fish insects mollusks. They mainly feed at night and have been described as opportunistic hunters. Adults prey mostly on fish, snails, clams but also take small mammals, waterfowl and possibly turtles. Younger alligators eat mostly insects and other small invertebrates. The only predators that adult Chinese alligators have to concern themselves with are humans. Juvenile alligators and eggs are at high risk of being eaten by other adult alligators, cats, dogs, raccoon dogs and large birds and fish.

Chinese Alligator Behavior, Burrows and Communication

Chinese alligators are natatorial (equipped for swimming), nocturnal (active at night), motile (move around as opposed to being stationary), sedentary (remain in the same area), hibernate (the state that some animals enter during winter in which normal physiological processes are significantly reduced, thus lowering the animal’s energy requirements), solitary, territorial (defend an area within the home range), and have dominance hierarchies (ranking systems or pecking orders among members of a long-term social group, where dominance status affects access to resources or mates). [Source: Lauren Groppi, Animal Diversity Web (ADW) /=]

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Chinese alligator home Chinese alligators brumate from late fall into early spring, when temperatures are cool. Brumation is a period of dormancy that some cold-blooded animals experience during the winter. It's similar to hibernation, but it's not technically the same process. During this time the alligators dig burrows on the banks of wetlands that are approximately one meters deep, 0.3 meters in diameter and 1.5 meters long.

Burrows are used throughout the year, but serve as the brumation place in the winter. Some burrows are very large and complex and may house more than one alligator. They can have multiple rooms, water pools, and different entrances. Most of them are 10 to 25 meters (33 to 82 feet) long, with each room having enough space for alligators to turn around after entering.

After Chinese alligators emerge from their burrows in April, they spend time basking in the sun to raise their body temperature, as they are ectotherms and cannot create their own heat. Once their body temperature has normalized, they return to their normal nocturnal lifestyle. They are aquatic animals, and can also use the water to thermoregulate by staying in the upper water columns heated by the sun, or moving to shaded waters to cool off.

Chinese alligators sense using vision, touch, sound, vibrations and chemicals usually detcted with smell. They communicate with touch, sound, chemicals and scent marks (produced by special glands and placed so others can smell or taste them) and vibrations. Both males and females make bellowing sounds to communicate location. Although they use such sound much more during the mating season they also use them other times of the year. Chinese alligators sometimes use body language to communicate. For example, they slap the water with their lower jaws or snap their jaws as a warning. During mating, males may create subaudible vibrations in the water to attract a mate. Also in mating, the female may rub up against the male to indicate she is ready to mate.

Chinese Alligator Mating and Reproduction

Chinese alligators are polygynous (males have more than one female as a mate at one time) and oviparous (young are hatched from eggs). They engage in seasonal breeding, breeding once a year with mating in June, followed by egg-laying in mid-July usually at night. The number of eggs laid ranges ranges from 10 to 40, but is generally between 20 and 30. The eggs are about six centimeters (2.4 inches) in length, 3.5 centimeters (1.38 inch) in diameter, and weigh 45 grams (1.59 ounces), making them smaller than the eggs of any other crocodilian. [Source: Lauren Groppi, Animal Diversity Web (ADW) /=\; Wikipedia]

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Mother and young The mating season takes place in June, not long month after the rainy season has begun. Both males and females bellow and roar to communicate their location and search around ponds for mates. Both sexes use a musk gland under the lower jaw to produce a scent that the opposite sex finds attractive. A male male may fertilize several females in one mating season. Females are known to have only one mate each season.

In July females make a mound nest out of surrounding vegetation and mud on land next to a pond or rivers, often on an island. Females use coordinated movements of the front and hind limbs to form a pile in the center almost one meters high. Nests are often located near a burrow so that the mother can attend to her nest during incubation.

Chinese Alligator Parenting and Offspring

Female Chinese alligators take of the parenting duties. Pre-birth stage provisioning and protecting are done by females and Pre-independence protection is provided by females. Females may guard the nest and eggs for the 70 day incubation period until the hatchlings emerge in September. After the eggs are laid, females sometimes leave the nest, but other times stay to protect the eggs. Females that leave the nest may visit it frequently to make sure nest is safe from predators. Males have no parental involvement [Source:Lauren Groppi, Animal Diversity Web (ADW) /=\, Wikipedia]

Before young are born sex is determined by temperature. Lauren Groppi wrote in Animal Diversity Web: Young alligators begin development as hard-shelled eggs laid in a nest. Sex is determined by the temperature of the egg during incubation. Females are produced at lower incubation temperatures of below 28°C, while males are produced at higher temperatures of above 33°C. For this reason nests can produce a majority of one sex over the other based on the temperature of the nest. Similarly, nests can produce different sexes based upon what layer, how deep, or how shallow the egg was buried. The critical temperature for Chinese alligators, producing an even number of males and females is 31°C. The incubation period is approximately seventy days. Hatchlings weigh about 30 grams and average slightly over 21 centimeters long, again the smallest of an crocodilian

from the Chattanooga Zoo

After hatchlings emerge from their shells in September their mother responds to their vocalizations. She removes any debris covering the nest, and carries her offspring to the water. The mother may help the hatchlings break out of their egg shells by slowly rolling the eggs around in her mouth and lightly cracking the shell by pressing the egg between the roof of her mouth and tongue. Females are known to live with their young through the first winter, but little else is known about the specific interactions between adult Chinese alligators and their young.

Juveniles look very similar to adults with the exception that juveniles have distinctive yellow bands along their bodies. They have an average of five bands on their bodies, and eight on their tails. As adults mature, their coloring becomes less and less conspicuous. Juveniles grow rapidly during the first five years of life. Females and males reach sexual or reproductive maturity at five to seven years.

Endangered Chinese Alligators

The Chinese alligator is the most endangered crocodilian in the world and may become the first crocodilian species to become extinct in the wild in historical times. In the old days there were hundreds of thousands of them, perhaps millions. The population in the wild was about 1,000 in the 1970s. It decreased to below 130 in 2001, and grew after 2003, with its population being about 300 as of 2017. That means there are still far fewer of them left in the wild than pandas in the wild. Thousands of them are being raised in alligator farms. China listed Chinese alligators as a first-class protected animal in 1972. On the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List they have been listed as Critically Endangered since 1986. On the US Federal List they are classified as Endangered. In CITES (Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild) they are in Appendix I, which lists species that are the most endangered among CITES-listed animals and plants. /=\

In 2001 researchers attempted to make an accurate count of the alligators by going around at night and looking for the reflective eyes of alligators with flashlights. They counted only 23. The last survivors live among villagers in rice paddies and ponds. One of the largest groups, with 11 members, in the early 2000s lived in a pond near a video store.

Chinese alligator are threatened by human activity and shrinking habitats. Historically, they have been hunted for meat and body parts used in traditional medicine, particularly to treat gall bladder ailments. Other factors that have contributed to their decline include pollution and human intolerance and predation. Much of the alligators original habitat has been lost to rice cultivation and fish farming. Thirteen reserves have been set up for them but on these reserves you are more likely to find farmers, ducks and water buffalo than alligators. The farmers who live near the alligators are not thrilled about their presence and have little interest in protecting them. The alligators often eat their ducks and fish.

Laws have been set in place to protect the alligators and fortunately the small region in which they live is somewhat isolated. The Yangtze River basin floods every year, preventing its use as farm land and from permanent human residency. Although there has been much success in breeding Chinese alligators in captivity, little effort is being made to release captive bred individuals to replenish the wild population. [Source: Lauren Groppi, Animal Diversity Web (ADW) /=]

In 2019, the Global Times reported: More than 600 hectares of a nature reserve for Chinese alligators were found to have been exploited illegally as a development zone in a county in East China's Anhui Province. A statement released on May 11 by the Chinese Ministry of Environment and Ecology (MEE) said that the local government had ignored a request from the higher authorities to rectify the problem. The local forestry department has vowed to resolve the issue. The Chinese environmental watchdog uncovered the scandal during a national environmental inspection in late 2018.[Source: Shan Jie, Global Times, May 20, 2019]

Captive Chinese Alligators

Chinese alligator do quite well in captivity. More than 10,000 of them live at the Anhui Research Center for Chinese Alligator Reproduction near Xuancheng, China. Between 500 and 2,000 alligators are born there every year using artificial insemination. Many of these alligators are harvested for the meat, which is believed to make people live long and bring other health benefits. Alligator and meat is particularly popular in southern China.

Captive-bred alligators have been reintroduced do the wild in a couple of carefully selected sites. Three young adults were released into a dammed up area, where a well-established population of three to five alligators lives. The newcomers made themselves at home with relative ease, within months a female newcomer had reproduced. It was not clear whether the father was a newcomer or an established alligator.

One of the biggest obstacles to overcome is getting farmers to accept having alligators in their neighborhood. Scientists are trying get them to take pride in having the source of the dragon symbol in their backyard.

Crocodile Farms in China

In the mid-1990s, China's forestry department eliminated duties on the import of breeding crocodiles as way of develop a crocodile leather and meat industry to provide jobs for farmers losing their land. Over the past decade China has imported tens of thousands of crocodiles from Thailand, accompanied by Thai handlers, to get the industry going in southern China.

The crocodile industry in China has suffered a number of setbacks. The crocodiles from Thailand have had trouble adapting to the slightly cooler temperatures of southern China and often don't like the food that is served them. The biggest problem is that the males tend to overeat and become sluggish in the autumn and winter and have no interest in sex when the breeding season rolls around in the spring. Success in crocodile farming means having lots of breeding crocodiles producing new sources of meat and leather.

The cool temperatures at night make the crocodiles more likely to get sick and paying for antibiotics and other medicines and injecting them as they sit in pools is expensive and labor-intensive. The crocodiles also didn't like the ducks and fish from local ponds they have been given. They prefer more expensive chicken. To make matters worse the Thais who sold the Chinese the crocodiles slipped in a lot overaged males and females who were too old to reproduce.

Crocpark Guangzhou is the world's largest crocodile farm with 60,000 to 70,000 animals. In 1997 and 1998, taking advantage of low prices caused by the Asian financial crisis, it bought 40,000 crocodiles for as little as 75 cents a piece. The crocodiles, ranging in size from a few centimeters to six feet, filled the holds of five 747 cargo jets. The park loses money because it can't get the crocodiles to breed. To make money it has opened its doors to tourists who pay $1.25 for a bamboo pole with two chicken torsos attached to them to feed to the crocodiles.

100 Chinese Alligator Escape Farm During Flood

There are Chinese alligator farms with lots of alligators. Chinese Alligator Propagation Research Center (in Xuancheng 150 kilometers south of Nanjing and 150 kilometers west of Hangzhou) is an alligator farm with about 10,000 captive Chinese alligators. In 2016, nearly 100 Chinese alligators escaped their pens at another alligator farm in Wuhu after flooding along the Yangtze River allowed them to swim over their enclosure fences, Anhui Business News reported A few days afterwards only eight of the escaped animals had been recaptured.

Chen Binglin wrote in the South China Morning Post: An elderly farmer in the town of Huaqiao said he opened his door on Wednesday morning and saw an alligator lying on his doorstep. Other villagers reported they had encountered the predators regularly in recent days, sometimes mistaking the animals for rotten logs floating on the surface of the water. [Source: Chen Binglin, South China Morning Post, July 7, 2016]

“Over a large area of flooded farmland, the deep noises made by the alligators could constantly be heard and sounded “like pigs”, according to the report. The animals all belonged to one alligator farm. The farm owner said he had received flood warnings and had carried out countermeasures such as strengthening the fences, but the flood pushed the water level to more than half a meter above the fences. The farm is not the largest in Anhui. Another alligator farm in the city of Xuancheng keeps more than 10,000 alligators, and the local authorities are taking emergency measures to reinforce the fences. So far, only one animal has escaped.

The Wuhu government said Chinese alligators are usually timid and should not attack people unless frightened or provoked. A task force including government animal experts is on hand to recapture the escaped animals. The government warned that anyone who spread rumours to cause public panic would be arrested and punished severely. According to farmers taking part in the recapture mission, the animals are not easy to catch as they are constantly on high alert and, when animal experts approached them with nets, tend to submerge and escaped in the muddy water.

Image Sources: Wikimedia Commons, China Alligator Fund;

Text Sources: Animal Diversity Web animaldiversity.org ; National Geographic, Live Science, Natural History magazine, CNTO (China National Tourism Administration) David Attenborough books, New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Smithsonian magazine, Discover magazine, The New Yorker, Time, BBC, CNN, Reuters, Associated Press, AFP, Lonely Planet Guides, Wikipedia, The Guardian, Top Secret Animal Attack Files website and various books and other publications.

Last updated March 2025