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50 free Alligator trivia questions with answers — nature quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
42 free Alligator trivia questions with answers. Alligator trivia that goes well beyond 'gator or croc?'. These 50 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 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01How many living species of alligator are there?
Two
The American and the Chinese; several more are known only from fossils, the genus having first appeared about 37 million years ago.
Q 02The word 'alligator' is an English mangling of a Spanish phrase meaning what?
The lizard
Early Spanish settlers in Florida called it el lagarto; early English spellings included 'allagarta' and 'alagarto'.
Q 03Alligators are native to only two countries: the United States and which other?
China
The Chinese alligator, once called the muddy dragon, is confined to a few areas of Anhui province and is critically endangered.
Q 04Southern Florida is the only place where alligators live alongside which other wild reptile?
Crocodiles
About 2,000 American crocodiles live in Florida, and they were downgraded from endangered to threatened in 2007.
Q 05What determines whether an alligator egg hatches as a male or a female?
The nest temperature
Nests of 30 °C or cooler produce all females and 34 °C or hotter all males, so a nest built on leaves runs hotter than one on wet marsh.
Q 06What is the easiest way to tell an alligator's closed mouth from a crocodile's?
Only the upper teeth show
A crocodile's lower teeth fit into grooves outside the upper jaw, giving it the famous 'toothy grin'.
Q 07An alligator's snout is usually described as which shape, compared with a crocodile's?
Broad and U-shaped
A 2012 study of 23 crocodilian species found surprisingly little link between snout shape and bite force.
Q 08Roughly how many teeth does an adult American alligator have?
74–80
Juveniles start with small needle-like teeth for insects and fish that thicken as they move on to turtles and birds.
Q 09Alligators swallow stones that sit in the first part of their stomach. What are these called?
Gastroliths
They grind up food much like the gizzard of a bird, which makes sense given that crocodilians are birds' closest living relatives.
Q 10Which type of sound in male alligators' mating bellows makes the water over their backs 'dance'?
Infrasound
In April and May large groups form 'bellowing choruses' a few times a day, usually one to three hours after sunrise.
Q 11Which order of reptiles, including alligators, are the closest living relatives of birds?
Crocodilia
Both are the only survivors of the Archosauria, and crocodilians appeared about 83.5 million years ago.
Q 12In which year was the American alligator removed from the endangered species list as recovered?
1987
It had been listed in 1967 under a law that preceded the Endangered Species Act, after hunting for hides nearly wiped it out.
Q 13The American alligator is the official state reptile of Florida, Louisiana and which third state?
Mississippi
Its scientific name, Alligator mississippiensis, honours the river rather than the state.
Q 21Muja, the oldest alligator in captivity, has lived at a zoo in which European capital since 1937?
Belgrade
He survived the Axis and Allied bombings of the city in World War II and the NATO bombing of 1999.
Q 22The Chinese alligator is thought to have inspired what mythical creature?
The dragon
Marco Polo was the first outsider to write about it, and it appears in the Classic of Poetry composed as early as the 11th century BC.
Q 23The wild Chinese alligator population fell below what number in 2001 before slowly recovering?
130
It had been about 1,000 in the 1970s and was back to roughly 300 by 2017.
Q 14Adult male American alligators typically measure how long?
11 to 16 ft
The largest ever reported was a 5.84 m animal killed on Marsh Island, Louisiana, in 1890, though no specimen was kept to prove it.
Q 15The largest alligator ever reported, over 19 feet, was killed in 1890 by a member of which Louisiana family?
McIlhenny
Edward McIlhenny, of the hot-sauce family, left it on the bank because it was too heavy to move, so no specimen survives.
Q 16Alligators dig small ponds that hold water through the dry season. What are these ponds called?
Alligator holes
The habit is why the species is regarded as a keystone species and ecosystem engineer of the Everglades.
Q 17Which surprising food was documented in American alligator diets in 2013?
Fruit
Wild grapes, elderberries and citrus were found in their stomachs, meaning gators may spread seeds across their habitat.
Q 18Which invasive South American rodent, a Louisiana marsh menace, is a favourite alligator meal?
Nutria
Louisiana pays a bounty on them, and gators may be what stops them spreading east into the Everglades.
Q 19Alligators have been filmed killing and eating which unexpected marine animals?
Sharks
Bonnetheads, lemon sharks, nurse sharks and stingrays have all turned up in the diet, and sharks return the favour by preying on gators.
Q 20What urban myth surrounded Saturn, the alligator who died at Moscow Zoo in 2020 aged 83 or 84?
He had been Hitler's pet
He hatched in Mississippi, lived at the Berlin Zoo, which Hitler liked to visit, and was found by British soldiers three years after the zoo was destroyed.
Q 24Sewer inspectors first reported alligators beneath which US city in 1935, seeding the urban legend?
New York
The city still rescues several small alligators a year, most of them abandoned illegal pets found above ground.
Q 25Gatorade was invented in 1965 by a team of University of Florida researchers led by which physician?
Robert Cade
It was made at the request of football coach Ray Graves, and the team considered 'Gator-Aid' before dropping the suffix to avoid FDA medical claims.
Q 26The University of Florida football team adopted the 'Gators' nickname in which year?
1911
A Gainesville merchant had put an alligator on pennants in 1908 because it was native to the state and no other school had claimed it.
Q 27What are the names of the Florida Gators' costumed male-and-female mascot pair?
Albert and Alberta
She joined him in 1984, and they are the only male-female mascot duo in the SEC.
Q 28The Gator Bowl, held continuously since 1946, is played in which Florida city?
Jacksonville
It was the first college bowl game to be televised nationally, and the first edition was underwritten with $10,000.
Q 29'Alligator Alley' is the nickname for which interstate's stretch across the Everglades from Naples?
I-75
The extension south to Naples and then east was approved in 1968 and the last piece of I-75 opened in 1993.
Q 30Which attraction, opened in 1893, became in 1993 the first place to display every species of crocodilian?
St. Augustine Alligator Farm
It began as a sideshow at the end of a railway to get visitors to buy souvenirs; the reptiles soon became the main draw.