I’ll be honest – alligators are not a very big part of my life. They’re neither native nor invasive to Oregon – I don’t even think the Oregon Zoo has one (they have two African Slender-snouted Crocodiles, which true to Portland form, they’ve named Morgan and Lance, but no alligators) – so I don’t tend to encounter them while afield. I did see one once while bird watching in the Rio Grande Valley of Texas, and years ago in New Orleans I had a small portion of one, deep fried with a side of chips, but that’s the limit of my experience with them.
Dr. Kent Vliet, on the other hand, is exceptionally experienced with Alligators, but then as he’s a scientific advisor for the St. Augustine Alligator Farm Zoological Park and the chair of the Crocodilian Advisory Group for the Association of Zoos and Aquariums, that shouldn’t surprise you. Nor should it be surprising that, along with photographer Wayne Lynch, he’s written a book about them that was published by Johns Hopkins University Press this past March: Alligators; The Illustrated Guide to Their Biology, Behavior, and Conservation.
Presenting the biology, ecology, and natural history of the American alligator, Alligator mississippiensis (the only other living species, the Chinese Alligator, Alligator sinensis, is not covered in this work), Dr. Vliet’s Alligators offers the curious reader most everything they would wish for in a general overview of the species – including an important section that examines the complicated, often conflict-ridden relationship with it and another curious animal with which it shares its habitat: Homo sapiens.
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