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American alligators do not normally reach such extreme sizes. In mature males, most specimens grow up to about 3.4 m (11 ft 2 in) in length, and weigh up to 360 kg (790 lb), [7] while in females, the mature size is normally around 2.6 m (8 ft 6 in), with a body weight up to 91 kg (201 lb).
The same fish in 60° F water will have a body temperature near 60° F. After a cool night, a grasshopper may be too stiff and cold to hop until the morning sun warms its body.
Temperature-sensing probes implanted in wild American alligators have found their core body temperatures can fall to around 5 °C (41 °F), but as long as they remain able to breathe, they show no ill effects when the weather warms. [109]
Alligators and caimans split in North America during the early Tertiary or late Cretaceous (about 53 million to about 65 million years ago). [4] [5] The Chinese alligator split from the American alligator about 33 million years ago [4] and probably descended from a lineage that crossed the Bering land bridge during the Neogene.
However, given that alligators are cold-blooded reptiles, they undergo a different form of self-preservation. Much like snakes in South Carolina, alligators in the Palmetto State go into a state ...
Alligators stop eating when temperatures dip below about 70 degrees, entering a dormant state below 55 degrees, as noted by the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission.
Temperatures fell to 17 degrees in Ocean Isle Beach on the day the video was recorded, the park reported. The park’s alligators seemed to instinctively know when the water was about to freeze.
When warm, wet air from the lungs is breathed out through the nose, the cold hygroscopic mucus in the cool and dry nose re-captures some of the warmth and moisture from that exhaled air. In very cold weather the re-captured water may cause a "dripping nose". Ideally, air is breathed first out and secondly in through the nose. [9]