Nature
PUBLISHED
A tailless alligator has been attracting some double-takes in southern Louisiana this week. It may look a little unusual, but gators are incredibly tough creatures with impressive healing abilities, and experts believe there’s good reason to suggest this guy will be alright.
The rest of this article is behind a paywall. Please sign in or subscribe to access the full content.Ashlyn Bartholomew was driving her kids home from baseball practice in Plaquemines Parish on Tuesday, May 20, when she came across the animal slowly wandering across the highway. At first, she suspected it might be a big dog, but a closer look revealed it was, in fact, an alligator with a missing tail.
“Y’all be careful. There’s half an alligator walking on the road,” Bartholomew wrote on Facebook.
The post quickly went viral, sparking a mix of shock and humor in the comments section:
“Ain’t no way”
“What the helly?”
“There’s your cutie patootie”
Some were worried about the animal’s wellbeing, although things might not be as bad as they first seemed.
According to Robert Mendyk, a reptile expert at the Audubon Zoo in New Orleans, the alligator may have lost its tail due to a passing boat propeller or, more likely, a scuffle with a bigger alligator. Alligators can be territorial and fight over females. It’s not unusual for alligators to lose their limbs this way; they have remarkable healing abilities and regularly survive such amputations, he noted, so it’s not necessarily a death sentence for these hardy creatures.
“The wound walls itself off and heals. They have really phenomenal healing and regenerative abilities,” Mendyk told local news.
All animals can, to some extent, repair wounds through the regeneration of skin and muscle. Lots of reptiles can regrow their tails, like anoles or geckos, although the new appendage usually isn't as good as the first one. However, alligators surprised scientists in 2020 revealing they are the largest known animal to regrow lost limbs. Just because they can doesn't mean they always will though, and this wound appears to have healed into a nub instead of regrowing a new tail.
Mendyk noted that the injury may mean the alligator experiences difficulty when swimming, which will make hunting in the water very tricky. However, he’s fairly confident that the injured animal has managed to adapt to these adverse circumstances.
It “maybe has resorted to doing its hunting along the banks. One way or another, it seems to be surviving,” he said.
