MAPACA

Mid-Atlantic Popular &
American Culture Association

Alligators are as much a part of American life and legend as the rivers, coastal waterways and swamps they inhabit, and the Cajun (Acadians) with whom they share the land. They are also the only indigenous survivors of the age of dinosaurs. Yet until recently, little was known about how they behave in the wild, be it hunting, mating, nesting, or caring for their young. Anatomical differences between alligators and (e.g.) crocodiles were already understood, but not much else. Today we realize that alligators even have a ‘language’ consisting of sounds (hisses, bellows, and cries) emitted at precise pitches (octaves) by which they “speak” and engage in dialogue. They have an awareness of their own mortality, belying their reputation as mindless beasts and apex predators.

Far from being “the monsters of the Mississippi,” cannibals amid the caimans, who “eat their young,” yet operate entirely on instinct, attacking people (especially infants and small children) without cause or provocation, alligators were once an endangered species. They are making a grand comeback from near-extinction, despite environmental damage caused by pollution, global warning, careless (and reckless) tourists, avid sportsmen, weekend warriors, plus licensed hunters procuring hides for pharmaceutical, culinary and high fashion industries. Fortunately, alligators are never out of style or season. They endure change, transcend cataclysm, and remain constant from one epoch to another. Over 100 million years since they reached maturity as a species, ‘gators are so perfectly adapted to their once-natural habitat (especially in Louisiana, Florida and parts of Georgia) that there’s nothing left to do but live and die—or die out.

We must grow and evolve, or else our history is over, even while we rapidly remake it in our inhuman image, before a venerable reptilian ancestor hiss quits. The ecological scales we must rebalance are our own.