American crocodile

Crocodiles eat meat.

Baby crocodiles eat small water animals and little fish. Big crocodiles eat fish, crabs, turtles and birds.

American crocodiles are carnivores. Adults eat fish, crabs, birds, turtles, snakes, frogs and small mammals. Young crocodiles mostly eat small water animals without backbones and little fish.

Like other crocodiles, they will eat almost anything they can catch. Baby crocodiles have many enemies, but fewer animals can catch them as they grow bigger.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service lists an adult diet of fish, crabs, birds, turtles, snakes and small mammals, while juveniles feed chiefly on aquatic invertebrates and small fish; it notes that crocodilians generally take any prey they can catch and overpower. The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission adds frogs, citing Fishman and colleagues (2009).

Size matters for safety too: Animal Diversity Web notes that newly hatched and young crocodiles are especially vulnerable to predators, and that the number of potential predators falls as they grow.

American crocodiles are shy.

If a crocodile is surprised, it splashes into the water to get away. It is best to watch them from far away.

American crocodiles are shy and secretive. If a person surprises a basking crocodile, it may rush noisily into the water. That splash can be startling, but it means the crocodile is frightened and is trying to get away.

Most of the time, crocodiles slip quietly into the water. They spend much of the day basking or resting in the water, and the open-mouthed gaping you might see is just a way of cooling down.

The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission describes American crocodiles as shy and reclusive. A surprised basking animal may enter the water quickly and noisily, a sign of fear, whereas undisturbed crocodiles normally enter quietly; gaping is thermoregulation, not aggression.

The IUCN reports that human-crocodile conflict is a growing problem along Mexico's Pacific coast, where the government agency SEMARNAT runs an 'SOS crocodile' program with regional response teams. In Florida, the state wildlife agency runs a crocodile response program and advises people never to feed crocodiles.

Long ago, people hunted many crocodiles for their skins.

Now crocodiles are protected in many places, and in Florida there are many more than before.

From the 1930s to the 1970s, people hunted huge numbers of American crocodiles to make leather from their skins. In Florida only a few hundred were left when they were listed as endangered in 1975.

With protection, Florida's crocodiles have come back to as many as 2,000 adults, and they are now listed as threatened instead of endangered. Across their whole range, crocodiles still face habitat loss, illegal hunting and getting caught in fishing nets. The IUCN lists the species as Vulnerable.

The IUCN's assessment (made in 2020, published in 2022) lists Crocodylus acutus as Vulnerable (A2cd), inferring a 30 percent decline over three generations (75 years) from habitat decline and exploitation; it estimates about 5,000 mature individuals and an increasing overall trend. Commercial hunting for skins from the 1930s into the 1970s caused the main past declines.

A review in the early 2000s found recovery uneven: populations were healthy in Cuba, the United States, Mexico and Costa Rica, recovery was limited in Colombia, and there was none in Ecuador. Current threats include habitat loss, fishing nets, illegal hunting and hybridization with escaped Morelet's crocodiles. In Florida, numbers grew from a few hundred to as many as 2,000 adults, and the population was reclassified from Endangered to Threatened in 2007; road deaths and a 2010 cold spell have been notable causes of mortality there.