Alligator Trivia
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49 free Alligator trivia questions with answers — nature quiz, new questions added Sep 2026.
42 free Alligator trivia questions with answers. Alligator trivia that goes well beyond 'gator or croc?'. These 49 questions cover the animal itself: why nest temperature decides an alligator's sex, what the stones in its stomach are for, the infrasound bellow that makes water dance on its back, the sharks and fruit it turns out to eat, and the two countries on Earth where alligators actually live. Then it widens out to everything gators have touched: the Spanish phrase behind the name, the 19-foot monster shot by a member of the Tabasco family, the Moscow Zoo alligator wrongly said to be Hitler's pet, the New York sewer legend, Gatorade, the Florida Gators, Alligator Alley, Swamp People and the 1980 horror film with a gator flushed down a toilet. Easy questions come first and the hard ones will stump a Florida native. Every answer has been checked against a reference source, shown under each question once you answer, so it is safe for a classroom, a zoo trip or a pub quiz round.
30 of 49 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01How does a mother alligator move her newly hatched young from the nest to the water?
In her mouth
In her mouth. The same jaws that can crack a turtle's shell ferry the hatchlings to the water a mouthful at a time without harming one.
Q 02The word 'alligator' is an English mangling of a Spanish phrase meaning what?
The lizard
The lizard. Spanish explorers in Florida called the animal el lagarto, and English speakers ran the article and the noun together into a single word.
Q 03The critically endangered Chinese alligator survives in the wild along the lower reaches of which river?
Yangtze
Yangtze. It is even called the Yangtze alligator, and the thousands bred in captivity now far outnumber the few hundred at most left in the wild.
Q 04Why can alligators spend only short spells in salt water?
They lack salt glands
They lack salt glands. Crocodiles have working ones, which is one reason the two share South Florida as they do: crocodiles on the salty coast, alligators inland.
Q 05What determines whether an alligator egg hatches as a male or a female?
The nest temperature
The nest temperature. Cooler nests, at about 30°C or below, hatch females, and nests just a few degrees warmer turn out mostly males.
Q 06What do you see when an alligator, unlike a crocodile, closes its mouth?
Only the upper teeth show
Only the upper teeth show. An alligator has an overbite, so its upper jaw hides the bottom row, while a crocodile's big fourth lower tooth stays on view outside the snout.
Q 07An alligator's snout is usually described as which shape, compared with a crocodile's?
Broad and U-shaped
Broad and U-shaped. The wide snout suits a generalist: alligators take prey from small fish up to deer, while needle-jawed relatives such as the gharial stick mostly to fish.
Q 08About how many teeth can an alligator get through in a lifetime?
3,000
3,000 or so. Teeth are replaced as they wear down, so a mouth that holds about 80 at a time gets through dozens of full sets.
Q 09What are the stones called that alligators swallow and hold in the first part of their stomach?
Gastroliths
Gastroliths. Alligator teeth can grip prey but not chew it, so the swallowed stones are thought to help grind food down, though some animals carry them as ballast.
Q 10Which type of sound in male alligators' mating bellows makes the water over their backs 'dance'?
Infrasound
Infrasound. An audible note has started the bellowing too: a B flat played on a tuba at one Florida park made captive alligators roar back.
Q 11Apart from other crocodilians, alligators' closest living relatives are which animals?
Birds
Birds. Crocodilians and birds are the last living branches of the group that also produced the dinosaurs, so a gator is closer kin to a sparrow than to a snake.
Q 12Why does US law list the recovered American alligator as threatened?
A rarer lookalike
A rarer lookalike. Hunters could confuse it with the American crocodile, so the alligator, declared recovered in 1987, keeps federal protection.
Q 13The American alligator is the official state reptile of Florida, Louisiana and which third state?
Mississippi
Mississippi. It was the last of the three to adopt the alligator, in 2005, though scientists had called the species mississippiensis ever since it was first classified.
Q 21Muja, the oldest known alligator in captivity as of 2025, has lived since 1937 at a zoo in which European capital?
Belgrade
Belgrade. He has lived there through the German bombing of 1941, the Allied bombing of 1944 and the NATO air raids of 1999.
Q 22Unlike the American alligator, the Chinese alligator has bony armour plates on which part of its body?
Its belly
Its belly. It is armoured all round, and its blunt teeth are built for crushing the snails and other hard-shelled molluscs it eats.
Q 23Hunting for which part of the alligator put the species on the endangered list in the 1960s?
Its hide
Its hide. Once the trade in skins was brought under control, the alligator bounced back so fast that it came off the endangered list within twenty years.
Q 14What colour do an alligator's eyes appear to glow when a light catches them at night?
Red
Red. A mirror-like layer behind the retina bounces light back through the eye, giving the alligator a second chance to catch it when hunting in the dark.
Q 15The largest alligator ever reported, over 19 feet, was shot in 1890 by a member of the family behind which hot sauce?
Tabasco
Tabasco. Edward McIlhenny said he left the animal on a muddy Louisiana bank because it was too heavy to move, so no specimen exists to prove the record.
Q 16What name is given to the small ponds alligators dig that hold water through the dry season?
Alligator holes
Alligator holes. They stay wet when the marsh around them dries out, so other wildlife crowds in to drink and feed, which is why the alligator counts as a keystone species.
Q 17Which surprising food was documented in American alligator diets in 2013?
Fruit
Fruit. The seeds pass through or are spat out far from the parent plant, so scientists think alligators may quietly help forests spread.
Q 18Which invasive South American rodent, a Louisiana marsh menace, is a favourite alligator meal?
Nutria
Nutria. Their grazing strips the coastal marsh bare, so Louisiana pays registered hunters and trappers a bounty for every nutria tail they hand in.
Q 19Alligators have been photographed catching and eating which unexpected marine animals?
Sharks
Sharks. A 2017 study confirmed alligators eating bonnethead, lemon and nurse sharks and a stingray, and found old accounts of sharks eating alligators in turn.
Q 20What urban myth surrounded Saturn, the alligator who died at Moscow Zoo in 2020?
He had been Hitler's pet
He had been Hitler's pet. The truth was stranger: he escaped when bombs wrecked the Berlin Zoo, was found by British soldiers in 1946 and was handed over to the Soviets.
Q 24Sewer inspectors were said to have first reported alligators beneath which US city in 1935, seeding an urban legend?
New York
New York. The claim comes from the city's sewer chief, Teddy May, who said he disbelieved his inspectors at first; folklorists suspect he made much of it up.
Q 25How does an alligator deal with prey that is too big to swallow whole?
Spins to tear off chunks
Spins to tear off chunks. The move is known as the death roll: the alligator bites down and whirls on its own axis until a swallowable piece twists free.
Q 26Which mammal is the chief raider of alligator nests?
Raccoons
Raccoons. They dig out the eggs even though the mother stays close to the mound all through incubation and rushes back when it is threatened.
Q 27The Gator Bowl, held continuously since 1946, is played in which Florida city?
Jacksonville
Jacksonville. The bowl gave its name to the city's stadium in 1948, and the NFL ground that opened on the site in 1995 became the game's new home.
Q 28How far up the Atlantic coast does the American alligator's natural range reach?
North Carolina
North Carolina. Alligators cope with cold better than other crocodilians and can even get through short freezes, which lets them live that far from the tropics.
Q 29Which parts of a floating alligator stay just above the water while the rest of its body is hidden?
Eyes, ears and nostrils
Eyes, ears and nostrils. They all sit high on the head, so the animal can watch, listen and breathe while its body stays under the surface.
Q 30Besides bellowing, how do male alligators signal to rivals and mates at a distance?
Slapping their heads on the water
Slapping their heads on the water. The male lifts his head and slams it down, and because sound travels faster in water the crack carries a long way.