Alligators typically inhabit freshwater environments like slow-moving rivers, swamps, marshes and lakes. They have powerful jaws and a diet consisting of fish, snails, birds, frogs and small mammals. Adult females average 8.2 feet in length while males average 11.2 feet, with some alligators weighing up to 1000 pounds. Alligators have armored bodies with muscular tails and plated skin on their backs.

1. Alligators

2. Habitat Alligators are usually found in freshwater, in slow-moving rivers. They are also found in swamps, marshes, and lakes.

3. Diet They have very strong jaws that can crack a turtle shell. They eat fish, snails and other invertebrates, birds, frogs, and mammals that come to the water's edge.

5. Description The average size for an adult female American alligator is 8.2 feet. The average size for a male is 11.2 feet. Alligators can reach a weight of nearly 1,000 pounds.

6. Both males and females have an "armored" body with a muscular flat tail. The skin on the back is armored with embedded bony plates. Alligators have a long snout with upward facing nostrils at the end—this lets them breathe while the rest of the body is underwater.

7. Alligator Babies Alligators lie eggs in nests, which hatch after 65 days The sex of the juveniles is determined by the temperature of the nest: above 93° F (33.8° C) all are male, below 86° F (30° C) all are female .

8. A photo of a baby alligator

9. Interesting ‘gator facts Alligators have between 74 and 80 teeth in their mouth at a time. As teeth wear down they are replaced. An alligator can go through 2,000 to 3,000 teeth in a lifetime. American alligators may live to about 50 years in the wild. Spanish sailors visiting the New World thought the unfamiliar alligator was a huge lizard. In Spanish, el lagarto means the lizard. English sailors took the name as allagarter and in time it has become alligator. The alligator became the official state reptile of Florida in 1987. Alligators are hunted mostly for their skins, but also they are hunted for meat.

10. An underwater view of an alligator