Wildlife in Focus: Florida Alligators
- Zan Milligan
- Nov 24, 2017
- 2 min read
Original post date: 24th Nov 2017; updated October 2025
There's few things more quintessentially Florida than its alligators! You can find them pretty much everywhere in the Everglades, and they can also show in city drainage ditches, canals, golf courses and swimming pools, setting up basically anywhere they wherever there's fresh water and food. Fortunately, while American alligators are large, apex predators in these freshwater systems, they pose little real threat to adult humans, preferring to avoid us and feed on smaller prey like birds, fish, reptiles, amphibians or smaller mammals. Saying that, it's always worth keeping your pets and kids away from them, and of course, it should go without saying that these animals should be treated with respect and given plenty of space no matter what size you are!
Alligators are likely to be found pretty much anywhere there's freshwater in Florida, but we pretty much always head to the Everglades if I'm looking to see them in their natural habitat.
If we're feeling touristy, or have visitors in town, we'll typically take an airboat ride out in the Everglades, where you're more or less guaranteed to see alligators. There are a ton of different operators to choose from, but we tend to go out from the Everglades Safari Park, because they offer a decent tour and it's relatively close to where we live in Fort Lauderdale. They're obviously geared mostly towards alligator sightings, so they'll do regular tours moving mostly through the deeper canals dug by the Army Corp of Engineers in the mid 20th Century but, there are usually plenty of birds to see as well (though that's for another blog!), and you can get some beautiful evening light if you head over there for the late afternoon trips (~ 4pm).
The Everglades National Park is another great spot to go and look for them - it's obviously that much more wild, so there's obviously never any guarantees that you'll see any kind of wildlife on a given day, but we've had good luck seeing them around the Anhinga Trail when we take students there for field trips. There's also no risk that the animals are being baited when you're in a National Park. Saying all of this, we've seen them all over the state and it'd be more unusual than not to head into the wild parts of Florida and not see an alligator somewhere along the way.
I might well give the Everglades its own gallery at some point because it's just such a stunning location to live next to, but for now, you can enjoy these photos exclusively in the blog!
For more information about these gorgeous reptiles, check out the NPS species page: https://www.nps.gov/ever/learn/nature/alligator.htm
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