Crocodile Versus Alligator
Four ways to tell a crocodile from an alligator.
Samantha Enslen, Writing for
You’re in the water and your leg is being gnawed by a toothy beast. Quick—is it an alligator or a crocodile? Here’s a handy set of questions to help you find out.
First, stare it in the face. If you see a wide, U-shaped, rounded snout, somewhat like a shovel, you’re probably looking at an alligator. But if you see a pointy, V-shaped snout, you’re probably looking at a croc.
Alligators’ wide jaws are ideal for crushing things. Things like the hard shell of a turtle. Or the tough exoskeleton of a lobster. Or the brittle skull of a frightened human.
Crocodiles’ thin jaws aren’t quite as strong, but they still get the job done. Either beast can exert up to 3,700 pounds of pressure per square inch when it clamps its teeth together. Compare that to the 150 pounds of pressure you or I would use nibbling a sandwich. There’s no comparison.
Next, look at its mouth. In crocodiles, the upper jaw is about the same width as the lower jaw. Therefore, both its upper and lower teeth stick out when it closes its mouth. If you look closely, you might even notice an extra-long tooth on the bottom jaw. It’s the fourth one in from the nose, and it juts way up over the top lip of some crocs.
In contrast, an alligator’s upper jaw is wider than its lower jaw and overlaps it quite a bit. Therefore, when an alligator closes its mouth, you can only see its upper teeth.
While you’re studying the jaw, try not to think about the fact that both types of reptiles grow an inordinate number of teeth over the course of their lifetimes—up to 8,000! As one falls out, they simply grow another. On a day-to-day basis, they have about 100 in their mouths.
Also, try not to remember that some of these teeth are dull, meant specifically for HOLDING ON TO YOU REALLY HARD. Others are knife-sharp, meant for TEARING EASILY THROUGH YOUR FLESH.
Taste the water around you. If it’s salty, you’re probably with a croc. These beasts have special glands in their tongues to help them process excess salt. You can often find them in a salty mangrove swamp, a coastal lagoon, or a saltwater estuary. An estuary is the mouth of a large river next to the ocean, where the river’s current meets the ocean’s tide.
Alligators don’t have these special salt-eliminating glands. They can tolerate salt water for a short time, but they prefer to live in fresh water.
Rub their bellies. Both crocs and gators have small pits covering their upper and lower jaws. These pits, known as “dermal pressure receptors,” are highly sensitive. They help the creatures detect tiny pressure changes in water—the kind you or I might make walking into a lake.
Alligators have these pits just around their mouths, whereas crocs have them everywhere. If you rub the beast’s belly and feel a small dimple on every single scale, you’ll know you’ve got a croc.
Finally, you may decide not to care. After all, crocodiles and alligators are very similar. They’re part of the same scientific class (reptilia) and scientific order (crocodylia). And both are well-established predators.
In fact, the ancestors of crocodylians were biting and scratching their way through swamps before dinosaurs existed. One of their ancestors, Deinosuchus, was 33 feet long and weighed 10 tons. Fossil evidence suggests that they bit and scratched their way through Tyrannosaurs, as well. Yes, that’s right. They were big enough to kill a T. Rex.
Honestly, if crocs and gators have survived on earth for that long, that successfully, we may just not have a chance.
There’s your fact for the day: Crocodiles and alligators are very similar, but there are key differences in their body shape—their physiology—you can use to tell them apart. Next time, just try doing it from a distance.
Samantha Enslen runs Dragonfly Editorial. You can find her at dragonflyeditorial.com or @DragonflyEdit.
Crocodile image courtesy of Shutterstock.