Unlike many other animals on this planet, crocodiles and alligators have no finite life span. Instead, they continue to live and grow unless affected by their environment through a lack of food, disease, accidents, or another large predator. Instead of aging biologically, alligators continue to simply grow in size.
It may be tempting to think of these big reptiles as totally alien to us humans, but the truth is they live a lot like you do: they grow up quickly, reach full size, gradually get older and weaker, and eventually die (after what was hopefully a long – but not endless – life).
Technically some animals like Alligators, Flounders and Crocodiles do not die. Instead of aging biologically, they just keep on growing physically.
Michio Kaku, crocodiles have no recognised finite lifespan. Instead, they just get bigger and bigger until they're inevitably killed out by "starvation, accidents, or disease." This is the reason we don't happen to see crocodiles the size of Boeing 747s in the wild.
There are two main reasons. First, crocodiles can live for a very long time without food. Second, they lived in places that were the least affected when the asteroid hit Earth.
Crocodiles have cold blood
Neither of these factors was efficient during the cold and dark conditions following the Yucatan meteor impact. Crocodiles have cold-blooded metabolisms, which means they were able to live for long periods of time in severe darkness, cold, and with very little food.
Around 66 million years ago, at the end of the Cretaceous period, an asteroid struck the Earth, triggering a mass extinction that killed off the dinosaurs and some 75% of all species.
To date, there's only one species that has been called 'biologically immortal': the jellyfish Turritopsis dohrnii. These small, transparent animals hang out in oceans around the world and can turn back time by reverting to an earlier stage of their life cycle.
The oldest crocodile on record was Mr. Freshie, a saltwater crocodile that lived to 140 years old.
Well, crocodiles share a heritage with dinosaurs as part of a group known as archosaurs (“ruling reptiles”), who date back to the Early Triassic period (250 million years ago). The earliest crocodilian, meanwhile, evolved around 95 million years ago, in the Late Cretaceous period.
While alligators can't die from old age, they also don't live forever. The average lifespan of a wild American alligator is between 30-50 years with the Chinese alligator also averaging around 50 years in the wild.
Lobsters don't die due to old age. Instead, they end up at the seafood buffet or die from exhaustion during moulting – the process where they replace their shell due to their increasing size.
Keeping crocodiles as pets
There are two species of crocodiles that may be kept as pets - saltwater crocodiles and freshwater crocodiles. Both need similar conditions in captivity. To keep a crocodile you must get a permit to keep protected wildlife.
In rare cases, individual crocodilians have been known to bond so strongly with people that they become playmates for years. For example, a man who rescued a crocodile that had been shot in the head became close friends with the animal.
Freshie was a freshwater crocodile that lived to be 140 years old making him the oldest known crocodile to ever be put in captivity.
Today's crocodiles are not holdovers that have gone unchanged since the Jurassic, but are one expression of a great, varied family that's been around for over 235 million years. More than that, crocodiles are still evolving—and faster than they have at other times in their family's scaly history.
Coelacanths, first swam in the ocean about 400 million years ago and were believed to be extinct until one was caught off South Africa in 1938.
Especially during mating season (May-August). Be very careful. It is highly recommended that all menstruating women wear a diaper in addition to a full wetsuit too help cover the scent of their menstruations. Like bears, gators can smell the menstruation, which will put your entire party at risk.
Recent studies have found that crocodiles and their relatives are highly intelligent animals capable of sophisticated behavior such as advanced parental care, complex communication and use of tools for hunting. New research shows just how sophisticated their hunting techniques can be.
Flatworms, nematodes, and cnidarians (jellyfish, sea anemones, and corals) do not have a circulatory system and thus do not have blood. Their body cavity has no lining or fluid within it.
But the bullfrog, Lithobates catesbeianus show the same reaction in both situations. This indicates that bullfrogs do not sleep. Lithobates catesbeianus is an animal that cannot sleep.
Bullfrogs… No rest for the Bullfrog. The bullfrog was chosen as an animal that doesn't sleep because when tested for responsiveness by being shocked, it had the same reaction whether awake or resting.
Other than birds, however, there is no scientific evidence that any dinosaurs, such as Tyrannosaurus, Velociraptor, Apatosaurus, Stegosaurus, or Triceratops, are still alive. These, and all other non-avian dinosaurs became extinct at least 65 million years ago at the end of the Cretaceous Period.
"If dinosaurs didn't go extinct, mammals probably would've remained in the shadows, as they had been for over a hundred million years," says Brusatte. "Humans, then, probably would've never been here."
They would still probably be small, scrawny, and very generalized. But instead, the mammals were able to evolve and diversify and, well, ultimately, millions of years later, become some humans. So perhaps we would not have been here if it weren't for this extinction event 65 million years ago.