I’ve seen Alligators with their young, but not like this.
All I can say is…poor Mom. There were kids everywhere.
She must be very protective. We were just watched, very closely, but no problems. However she has kept a large number safe.
Above is a one year old hanging around near Mom.
This will be a multi article series. There were too many different places and types of her young to be in one post.
Recently the WordPress servers have been slow with images, and using galleries for groups of images display poorly on many sites I have seen. That said, the pages will be smaller until the issues are resolved.
She does look worn out 😏. How long do they care for their young?
They stay nearby for at least 2 years, up to 3 years. They grow a foot a year. A female has between 30 – 50 eggs. Like everything there is a high mortality rate. This female had an army though. Some just had to be from another gator.
I hope to work on some more later. WordPress has been slow and clunky with images so I need to shrink their size, hope it doesn’t ruin them.