Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Earler this year I knew a female croc down at Flamingo had built a nest and checked on her today. I found the eggs had hatched and here's a pic of her and a few of her babies. This is a RARE sight to find...Thanks for looking..

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Tom Crutchfield
www.tomcrutchfield.com

Tom,
Great picture! Thanks for sharing.
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WWW.LIZARDRC.COM

Actually Bobby Neal took the pic. I just posted it...thanks
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Tom Crutchfield
www.tomcrutchfield.com

She looked happy to see you!
A very beautiful sight!
How many babies did you count?
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1.0 Albino American alligator, "Smoke"
1.1 American alligator,"Al Bite Ya & Molly"
1.1 Purple Albino Reticulated Pythons, "Gumbo & Abita"
0.1 Eastern Gaboon Viper, "Gabbie" Recently passed away at 24 years old
Help me find this snake!

I saw only 5-6 babies and was told the Fish Crows were eating them one by one. It's a shame the powers that be can't take little ones like that and head start them when they see them being devoured by a Crow of all things!!!
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Tom Crutchfield
www.tomcrutchfield.com

Thats sickening. Normally that predation would be part of life. But with the low number of acutus out there, every hatchling is special. More special than a fish crow for sure.
Funny how when the American alligator was put on the endangered species list, conservation through commercialization saved the species. I dont see any C. acutus farms out there restocking the population. Kinda like "they" really don't want them to come back.
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1.0 Albino American alligator, "Smoke"
1.1 American alligator,"Al Bite Ya & Molly"
1.1 Purple Albino Reticulated Pythons, "Gumbo & Abita"
0.1 Eastern Gaboon Viper, "Gabbie" Recently passed away at 24 years old
Help me find this snake!

I tried YEARS AGO to talk the state into a head start program by harvesting live babies or eggs. I was told that nature would accomplish all this but here they're not ever going to become common unless their headstarted for several reasons. The first is a paucity of nesting habitat [most of this was accidently man made], periodic severe cold [over 100 adult crocs were documented as dying this year post freeze, no one knows actual # dead as those are only documented deaths], and high nest predation. The entire S W coast of Florida has NO GOOD NESTING areas hence no breeding population occurs there. Two simple measures would allow this Florida populaion of acutus to flourish, one is build nesting areass in suitable habitat [they need high sandy banks[ and the other is to head start the babies alreadt produced here. Here in extreme S E Florida there is a growing problem with nuisance Crocs now and I believe they don't want to make this situation more acute [pardon the pun] by increasing numbers quickly which could lead to croc versus man encounters...I'd rather have the Crocs..LOL
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Tom Crutchfield
www.tomcrutchfield.com

Awesome!

A few years back we saw 4 or 5 little acutus all well under 2ft there ... They mostly seemed to hangout down that first canal to the right, down at the end where the stones are like in your picture, there was kind of a small burrow behind the stones that the babies retreated to.
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Great Lakes Zoological