Xuancheng Yangtze Alligator

 

 

In Anhui province, there is a state-level Yangtze alligator reserve with the total area of 44300 hectares. In 1975, a province-level natural reserve established and in 1986 it was raised to be the country-level mainly used for alligator protection and its ecological protection. This is place is the living home of Yangtze alligator, who is the state-level first-rank protected wild animals. This place is humid and has sufficient rainfall; the exact local geographic locations give this animal the good living environment.

Yangtze Alligator only lives in China. Currently, it is the oldest reptile in the world. It is publicly called living fossil. Yangtze Alligator and Mississippi Alligator are the only two freshwater alligators in the world. Yangtze Alligator is one special species of alligators and one of the reptiles at the brink of extinction. It is roughly 2 meters long. It does not look like African crocodile and Thailand crocodile. Due to its dragon-like appearance, it is called Tulong or Zhupolong in folk.

Yangtze Alligator likes living in lakes and streams, or the moist bottomland or grassland. Yangtze Alligator has the good skills in cave digging. Generally Yangtze Alligators have more than three homes generally in the reeds, bamboos and woods. They like quietness and usually live in the caves at daytime and search for food at the nighttime. However they also like to act at the daytime, in general they like the sunny sleeping on the sands or nearby their caves. What they like eating is river winkle, river clam, fishes, shrimps, birds, rabbits and snakes. They usually eat a lot and collect much nutriment in the body, so they generally can bear the long-term hunger and can successfully experience the dormancy.