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Words to Know

A field glossary: the animals, the science, and the words to know

Crocodilian. Any member of the order Crocodilia: crocodiles, alligators, caimans, and the slender gharial. About twenty-six living species. All are semi-aquatic ambush predators of the water’s edge, and every large one can kill a person.

American alligator (Alligator mississippiensis). The broad-snouted crocodilian of the southeastern United States, and the one nearly everyone in the American South will ever meet. An animal of fresh and brackish water; a conservation success recovered from near-extinction.

American crocodile (Crocodylus acutus). A coastal, salt-tolerant crocodile of south Florida, Mexico, Central America, the Caribbean and northern South America. Shyer than the alligator in the U.S.; farther south, in Mexico and Central America, it is involved in fatal attacks, though it does not regard people as prey.

Caimans. The alligators’ close cousins, and the most numerous crocodilians of Latin America, from the small dwarf caimans through the widespread spectacled caiman (the one a visitor to any tropical wetland is likeliest to see) to the huge black caiman, apex predator of the Amazon and a proven man-eater. Freshwater animals, like the alligators. Most bite only in self-defence, but the black caiman hunts people, and an introduced, feral population of spectacled caimans is now well established in Puerto Rico.

Morelet’s crocodile (Crocodylus moreletii). A freshwater crocodile of the Gulf and Caribbean lowlands of Mexico, Belize and Guatemala. Long dismissed as small and shy, but the modern attack record credits it with dozens of attacks and over a dozen deaths in the past decade. An animal to keep well clear of.

Cuban crocodile (Crocodylus rhombifer). A boldly patterned, agile and unusually bold crocodile with the smallest wild range of any: Cuba’s Zapata Swamp and the Isla de la Juventud. A conservation treasure that still commands full respect.

Orinoco crocodile (Crocodylus intermedius). The largest crocodilian in the Americas, with historical records approaching twenty-two feet. Once a serious man-eater, it now survives only in the Orinoco basin of Colombia and Venezuela, its numbers so low that it is a conservation emergency long before it is a present danger.

Alligator vs. crocodile. Quick tells: an alligator’s snout is broad and U-shaped and hides its lower teeth; a crocodile’s is narrower and V-shaped and shows a toothy grin, and crocodiles have working salt glands (so they range into the sea) while alligators do not. Useful to know. The only safe rule is to treat both exactly the same.

Man-eater. A loose term for the species that hunt people as prey on purpose: chiefly the saltwater crocodile and the Nile crocodile, with the mugger crocodile close behind by body count. Crucially, the American alligator and American crocodile are NOT man-eaters: they do not regard a human as food. But a defensive, territorial, startled, or food-conditioned one will kill you just as dead.

Saltwater crocodile (“saltie,” Crocodylus porosus). The largest living reptile, of Asia and Australia, and one of the two great man-eaters. Not an American animal; referenced in this book only for comparison and scale.

Nile crocodile (Crocodylus niloticus). The large crocodile of sub-Saharan Africa; with the saltwater crocodile, among the animals that kill the most people on earth.

Apex predator. An animal at the top of its food chain, with no natural predators of its own. Every large crocodilian is one.

Ambush predator. A hunter that waits, hidden, and strikes by surprise at close range rather than chasing prey. This is the entire strategy of crocodilians, and the reason safety is about behavior, not vigilance.

Umwelt. A German word for the world as an animal actually senses it, rather than the world as it is. A crocodilian’s umwelt is built almost entirely around detecting prey through the water, and learning to picture it is the heart of staying safe around one.

Homing. The ability of crocodilians to find their way back to a home territory after being moved, sometimes across dozens or even hundreds of miles. It is the main reason relocating a large nuisance animal so often fails, and the reason so many are killed instead.

“Living dinosaurs.”. A popular name for crocodilians, not quite accurate, though the awe behind it is earned. Crocodilians are not dinosaurs; they are reptiles. But both descend from the same ancient group, the archosaurs (“ruling reptiles”), which makes crocodilians the closest living relatives of the dinosaurs, alongside birds, which actually are dinosaurs. Crocodilians have kept much the same body plan for over two hundred million years: they shared the rivers with dinosaurs, then outlasted the extinction that killed them.

Reptile. A cold-blooded, scaled, air-breathing, egg-laying vertebrate: crocodilians, lizards, snakes, turtles. Dinosaurs were a different branch of reptiles, most of which died out sixty-six million years ago; the crocodilians came through.

Cunning, patience and intelligence. Crocodilians are far smarter than their blank stare suggests. They learn the daily routines of their prey, remember the individual people who have caught or harmed them, use bait and simple tools, sometimes hunt cooperatively, and will watch a productive spot for days. Underestimating that intelligence is a fatal mistake.

Death roll. A crocodilian cannot chew, so it spins its whole body along its length to twist what it has caught into pieces it can swallow. The full sequence is seize, drag under, drown, then roll. A person who is still fighting gets rolled alive, which is how limbs are lost. You will not break a roll by strength. If the animal shifts its grip, that half-second is the only opening you are likely to get.

Teeth. A crocodilian’s roughly seventy-four to eighty teeth are conical pegs built to grip and hold, not to slice or chew. When it bites, the teeth drive in and lock; pulling away only tears the flesh and makes the grip hold harder. The animal grabs, holds, and drags its catch under the water.

Nictitating membrane. A clear “third eyelid” that sweeps sideways across the eye like a built-in pair of goggles, letting a crocodilian see underwater, in murk and darkness, while the eye itself stays protected.

Dome pressure receptors (integumentary sense organs). Tiny sensory pits in the skin, packed in their thousands around an alligator’s jaws, and over a crocodile’s whole body, more sensitive than a human fingertip. They feel the faintest ripple in the water, which is why splashing and noise attract these animals rather than scare them.

Salt glands. Glands on the tongue, present in all true crocodiles but not in alligators or caimans, that shed excess salt and let crocodiles live in estuaries, mangroves and the sea. This is why a crocodile can be waiting on an ocean beach and an alligator almost never is.

Osteoderms (“scutes”). Bony plates embedded in the skin that form natural armor along the back, part of why crocodilians survive injuries that would kill nearly anything else.

Brumation. The reptile version of winter dormancy: a slowed, sluggish state in cold weather. Alligators can brumate through a hard freeze, sometimes with just the snout held at a hole in the ice. Cold weather does not mean the animal is gone.

Feeding, and why never to. Feeding a wild alligator or crocodile, on purpose or by leaving fish scraps and bait in the water, teaches it that people mean food and strips away its natural wariness. A fed crocodilian is a future attack. It is illegal to feed wild alligators in Florida for exactly this reason.

Keystone species. A species that holds an ecosystem together, like the center stone of an arch. Alligators dig the “gator holes” that keep southern wetlands and their wildlife alive through drought.

Slide mark. A smooth, flattened track down a bank where a crocodilian has slid into or out of the water, a clear sign that one is present.

Floodplain. Low, flat land beside a river that floods after heavy rain: prime alligator and crocodile habitat and breeding ground.

Aboriginal peoples of northern Australia. The Indigenous peoples of Australia’s tropical north, who have lived alongside the saltwater crocodile for tens of thousands of years and hold it as a totemic being. Referenced in this book as one of humanity’s oldest working examples of living safely beside these animals.

Gator-wise / croc-wise. The safety ethic this book is built on: assume any natural water may hold an alligator or crocodile, and only enter where it is signposted as safe. Even then, keep your guard up.