Hernando County Crane Helps Gator Cross The Road
There are a lot of wonders in Florida’s wildlife. Especially when a Florida crane helps a gator cross the road.
When a woman from Pine Island in Hernando County stopped to take a picture of a small alligator on the side of the road, she saw this for herself.
Shannon Duke told Fox35 that she was on Pine Island when she saw Sandhill cranes close to a small alligator. She thought the animal might go after the cranes. She told the news source that the cranes were bothering the alligator, and “after a short bit, the gator made its move, and you see the rest.”
Instead of trying to kill something, the alligator moves toward the road, and the cranes walk beside it, giving it an airy guard of honor. Duke put the video on the Facebook page for Alligators of Florida on August 19.
“Never thought I’d witness this! Only in Florida!”, she wrote in the text.
Alligator Facts
- The American alligator and dinosaurs are cousins. Both alligators and dinosaurs descended from a common ancestor more than 200 million years ago.
- An alligator can live in fresh or brackish water (a mix of fresh and salt water). This includes canals, lakes, marshes, swamps, rivers, creeks and ponds.
- An alligator has five toes on its front feet and four webbed toes on its back feet which help it swim.
- An alligator can live for more than 50 years in captivity. The oldest alligator in captivity in over 76 years old and lives in a zoo in Siberia.
- An alligator eats mainly fish, turtles, various mammals, birds, and other reptiles.
- There are around 1.2 million alligators in Florida.
- The American alligator is the official state reptile of Florida.
- An alligator has roughly 80 teeth in its mouth at one time. As the teeth wear down they are replaced with new teeth. An average alligator can go through 2,000 to 3,000 teeth in a lifetime.
- An adult male alligator can grow as large as 14 feet and weigh more than 1,000 pounds.
- Alligators bask in the sun to keep warm.
- There are differences between alligators and crocodiles. Most noticeably, when an alligator’s mouth is closed you cannot see its teeth; when a crocodile’s mouth is closed, the fourth tooth on its lower jaw sticks out.
- An alligator can rip and swallow its food, but it cannot chew.
- An alligator can stay underwater without air for more than two hours.
- Never approach or feed an alligator. Feeding alligators makes them lose their fear of humans. Feeding an alligator is against the law.
