Faux T-Rex feeds a 500 lb alligator 

What does an alligator think about a Tyrannosaurus Rex?

In October 2016, Jason McDonald, 35, who works at the Colorado Gators Reptile Park, disguised himself as a T-Rex to taunt a 500 lb alligator with fish. But why? Well, for fun, and the park worker insists he was making Morris, as the reptile is known, “work for his food” because he had gotten “chunky.”
Adams later admitted he couldn’t see in the costume and joked he’d be having a “bad day” if the predator came out of the water. 


The photo made me wonder if an alligator would possibly have a genetic memory of T-Rex. Would the alligator look at the size of the mouth of an opponent and back off? Some alligator ancestors could eat a T-Rex.

Biologists have found in a study of all 23 living crocodilian species that crocodiles can kill with the strongest bite force measured for any living animal. The … bite forces of the largest extinct crocodilians exceeded 23,000 pounds, a force two-times greater than the mighty Tyrannosaurus rex.


Alligators are not crocodiles, but are they crocodilians? What is the evolutionary link between alligators and crocodiles?







Alligators are in a family under the order Crocodilia, which also contains the family for true crocodiles. Alligators are crocodilians.

The Crocodilia (or Crocodylia) are an order of mostly large, predatory, semiaquatic reptiles. They appeared 83.5 million years ago in the Late Cretaceous period (Campanian stage) and are the closest living relatives of birds, as the two groups are the only known survivors of the Archosauria. Members of the order’s total group, the clade Pseudosuchia, appeared about 250 million years ago in the Early Triassic period, and diversified during the Mesozoic era. The order Crocodilia includes the true crocodiles (family Crocodylidae), the alligators and caimans (family Alligatoridae), and the gharial and false gharial (family Gavialidae). Although the term ‘crocodiles’ is sometimes used to refer to all of these, a less ambiguous vernacular term for this group is crocodilians.


Alligators, would you prefer fresh water, are a bit less dangerous to humans than crocodiles.



When did the alligator family diverge from true crocodiles?

According to one timeline I found, the American alligator dates from 150,000,000 BC to the present while the true crocodile family extends back to 50,000,000 years BC. Alligators seem to be 100 million years older than crocodiles, so I take this to mean that they diverged 50 million years ago.

Leave a comment and correct me if I’m wrong.

I like to imagine that that particular alligator knows it’s a costume, and is thinking, “Ah, I get it. T Rex evolved into these clothes wearing builder monkeys that feed me. Weird.”

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