Alligators are only native to 3 countries around the world, but America is home to the biggest population. Here, there are over 5 million gators. There’s also a few in a tiny piece of northeastern Mexico. And, interestingly, there are also wild alligators in China, but we’ll get to those in a minute.

Let’s look at the US. Florida and Texas have the second a third largest gator populations respectively, but Louisiana has them beat! Given that the state’s basically all swamp and bayou, it makes sense.

Funny enough, the range of the gator overlaps with America’s best fried chicken, barbecue, and seafood boils. Maybe gators are fans of delicious southern food??

But, on a more serious note, there was a time when gators were death-rolling to extinction. Starting in the 1800s, alligators were decimated through hunting, habitat loss, and pollution. By the 1950s, there were only 100,000 alligators in the United States.

In 1966, the alligator was listed as an endangered species and became protected by federal law. Over the next 20 years, alligators made a dramatic comeback and were removed the endangered species list in 1987. That puts a whole new meaning into “see you later, alligator”!

Yet, there is one other country that rivals America’s alligator production. China. China has its own alligator species, known as the Chinese alligator. It’s smaller than the American alligator and is practically harmless, but it’s irresistibly cute. Evidence suggests that it was the inspiration for the Chinese Dragon, which is associated with water, royalty, and good fortune.

But how did they end up all the way in China? Well, let’s brush up on alligator lore. 65 to 53 million years ago, alligators split from caimans, and 33 million years ago, Chinese alligators split from American alligators. The Chinese alligator likely descended from gators that crossed the Bering Sea land bridge over 20 million years ago.

In ancient China, alligators were plentiful, especially around the Yangtze River, but as the country developed, their numbers declined. In modern times, they are one of most endangered crocodilians in the world, and there are only about 300 left in the wild.

But China is working to save them. In 1972, China listed the alligator as a Class I endangered species, giving it the highest possible degree of legal protection. This made killing or capturing the species in the wild forbidden.

China also started captive breeding programs in the 1970s, and today, there are over 20,000 Chinese alligators that have been bred in captivity. The wild population is still only 1.5% of those numbers, but slowly, these captive alligators are being reintroduced into the wild. Perhaps, someday, there will be as many gators in China as there were in ancient times.

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