Florida Alligators | Everglades National Park

Passion for Alligators

Do you have a passion for alligators? While at South Beach Miami, you may not be thinking much about alligators.

South Beach is really all about the parties, the fashions, and being at the beach.

But even if alligators aren’t your normal idea of fun - they are only an hour away! Just take a half a day tour to the Everglades National Park and see alligators in the wild.

The Everglades National Park is often called the alligator farm.

Besides the alligators, you will find there a large and continuous stand of saw grass prairie.

The Everglades is also a major “edge” habitat zone for many species that spend time in what is the northern or southern edge of their respective areas of habitat.

For example, the Everglades area is also one of the more significant wading bird breeding areas in North America.

What to Expect

During the tour you will be viewing the alligators from the air-boat. According to the tour guide, alligators are very territorial. Typically they will not bother you if you don’t provoke them, or get the idea in your head that you can stop dangling your hand in the water before they can attack!

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Alligators mostly sleep quietly in the Lilly pad areas or float lazily along the surface, eyeing up the strange animals (us) taking pictures of them. Still, they can move quickly to grab a silly frog or bird that strays too close. Think then, what a hand with five moving fingers must look like floating along in the water. It may look like lunch!

Alligators in the Wild

Anyhow, you don’t have to be as adventurous as Rambo to see alligators in the wild. Just stay in the air-boat and safely enjoy what appears to be a jungle, but what is actually a large mangrove ecosystem, teeming with wildlife.

Be sure to take your camera. You will be able to take some great pictures of alligators at leisure, floating like an old log on the surface, or with only their two big eyes atop a flat snout above water. “Is that a Lilly pad too, Momma?

By the time your tour to Everglades National Park has ended, you will have enjoyed a fun boat ride, watched the alligator show, checked another National Park off your bucket list, and captured some terrific photographs.
You can even hold a little baby alligator in your hands!

Friends with Alligators? Yep.

You may even consider alligators as your friends — albeit, ones that are best at home in their own place. Just don’t try to shake hands either while visiting or when you leave!

At the end give your alligator goodbyes with this familiar idiom: “See you later, Alligator!”

Alligators at Everglades National Park

Passion for Alligators

What to Expect

Alligators in the Wild

Friends with Alligators? Yep.

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In Pictures

Video - Everglades Park - Alligators