Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Its skull?
Thanks
Xavier

One common ratio or rule of thumb is for every inch between the time of the nose and the front of the eye socket, the gator is one foot in total length. Some of the old hunters used to estimate the lenght using the distance between the eyes because that was what they saw when shining the gators at night. Another common ratio is the length of the head (tip of nose to the back of the skull plate). In crocs the ratio is about 7:1 and gators closer to 8:1.

Of course these are highly variable. For example, many captive alligators have shorter snouts that thier wild counterparts, which would throw the nose to eye ratio off.

Thanks for the info, is the one with the eyes to nostrils useable on just skulls? I have a skull thats roughly 12'' from nose tip to the bone plate so how do I determine the length with that?
Thanks
X

If the head length is 12", following an 8:1 ratio the gator would have been ~ 8 feet long.