CHINESE ALLIGATOR 
Smaller than its American cousin, the Chinese alligator spends its days 
quietly, but at night moves about a good deal and bellows lustily. The 
bellowing is accomplished by a rapid exhalation which also seems to remove 
dust from the creature’s nasal passages. 
It makes a home by digging a hole, one foot in diameter, sunk 
obliquely to a depth of about five feet in the grassy river bank. As the 
cold, dry weather approaches, the alligator begins to enter the hibernation 
period; it issues less and less frequently from its hole, and finally settles 
down to await the warm season. 
During the warm weather they charge with open mouths. At such times 
it is conceivable that they may bite, although they usually have to be 
teased before they seek to inflict injury. 
Their food consists in the main of rats, fishes and insects. 
In midsummer the Chinese alligator lays ellipsoidal eggs, about as 
large as ducks’ eggs. It builds no nest, carelessly leaving its eggs amid 
weeds to be hatched by the heat of the sun. At birth the baby ’gators are 
tan in color, with yellow markings that disappear as they grow. Full 
grown, they measure a maximum of six feet and are a dull blackish color 
with irregular, dull yellow cross bands. In captivity one specimen lived 
for fifty years. 
The Chinese alligator first became known to western science in 1879 
when A. A. Fauvel wrote an account of it, but specimens were rare out¬ 
side of China until 1922 when Clifford H. Pope secured twenty in the lower 
Yangtze valley. 
Pope found that alligators lived only in a small area, though fossil 
remains show that they were once common throughout eastern China. He 
secured his specimens by digging them out of their holes during the hiber¬ 
nating period. One hole was shared by a wildcat, which Pope’s collector, 
barehanded, also captured. 
It required only a week for Pope to secure twenty specimens, and 
he reported an almost unlimited number of alligator dens in the region. 
This is highly remarkable in view of the density of human population 
there. However, one explanation may be that the Buddhist priests consider 
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