Albino alligator how many

Albino alligators in the wild are at a greater risk of being spotted by a predator and rarely live as long as their non-albino counterparts. Even in human care, albino alligators tend to live shorter lives fraught with more health complications than non-albinos.

American alligators can make it into their 70s, but the oldest living albino gator, Claude , is a legend at just It will be a while before keepers announce the sex of the hatchlings, which is determined by their incubation temperature. When they hatched, they were under a foot long, but can grow to be 8 to 11 feet long and weigh hundreds of pounds. The genetic mutations that cause albinism tend to make animals less hardy in general, Wasilewski told LIve Science.

The new babies are part of a decades-long history of albino alligators at attractions in Florida, Louisiana and other gator farms. Alligators were once endangered, Waskilewski said, but conservation and management has grown their numbers to high levels — 1.

For that reason, many states now issue permits for alligator hunting and egg collection from the wild. This keeps alligator population numbers sustainable in the amount of habitat available to them, Wasilewski said.

As part of this program, some licensed facilities and individuals are allowed to harvest, purchase and breed alligators. The family line of the new babies hails from Louisiana, where a permitted egg collector found a nest with several albino babies in the s. The Saint Augustine Alligator Farm Zoological Park in Florida bought the rights to harvest the nest in subsequent years gators nest in the same area year after year.

There's no real conservation advantage to owning or breeding albinos or other alligators with unusual coloration, Wasilewski said, but they're a tourist draw. The new babies are small enough to be picked up in one hand, with red eyes and barely visible yellow and pinkish stripes along their white backs.

They're not on public display yet, but they will soon be moved to an aquarium in the gift shop, according to the Sun-Sentinel. The babies can't be kept with their parents, zoo co-owner Sam Haught told the newspaper, lest the mother decide to snack on them. Spitzer can be reached at michelle bymichellespitzer.

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