Thank you for going over that here, as I am sure there are others who wonder about the very same thing.

Oh and sorry about the length of my post. You know me.

Although this was addressed in the MonsterQuest episode on gators in the sewers, several people seem to have missed this or have not been able to view it.

People would be aghast to learn how alligators are raised on alligator farms, but the reality is they are grown in almost total darkness (in many ways not unlike the circumstances to be found in the hot, humid, dark sewers of an urban area).

Here’s what one academic paper observed about the normal conditions on an alligator farm:

“Alligators were kept at a constant ambient temperature of 32 C in water-filled igloo-shaped or rectangular concrete pens, which on average held approximately 200 animals of approximately the same size and age. The igloo-shaped pens had 848–897 l of water and the rectangular pens had 799–3,464 l of water. Pens were kept dark and completely enclosed with the exception of narrow gaps around the entry door for feeding or maintenance. Pens were provided with chlorine-treated well water that was drained and refilled three times a week. Alligators were maintained on a diet of ground beef and alligator chow.”
(Source: Journal of Wildlife Diseases, 41(1), 2005, pp. 96-106)

Alligator farmers learned long ago that alligators grow faster and are healthier if grown for their meat in darkened pens.

Consider this, alligators outlived the dinosaurs by being extremely flexible in a variety of living conditions. Sewers, filled with plentiful food, such as rats, plus rather warm temperatures in watery settings, do not sound too wonderful by human standards, but for alligators, it’s rather close to gator heaven.

Also, as has been pointed out by various comment-makers at the Boing Boing discussion about his topic, the human diet contains extra amounts of Vitamin D in our foods and the toxic flushings that end up in the sewers. Due to the fact that humans don’t get as much sunshine as we need, the boost to our diets do have a spillover (pun intended) to any animals living in urban sewers, which could then, in turn, be eaten by alligators.

There really aren’t too many reasons why we could not expect alligators to survive at least for the short term in these conditions, yet many reasons why they could.

For instance, there are lots of animals to eat such as rats, possums, raccoons, and others. Alligators don’t just eat big things like deer and other large prey. They can and will eat pretty much anything they can get their teeth on, and in the wild will eat birds, turtles, small reptiles, you name it. They will also eat decomposing carcasses if the chance presents itself. With such an opportunistic and generalized diet, the sewer could provide plenty to eat for an animal like the alligator.

Temperatures are also not as much of a problem as people tend to think, even in a place that would typically be considered far too cold to support cold blooded animals such as alligators. The reason for this is that decomposing refuse actually produces a good amount of heat in an enclosed environment such as a sewer. Even in the cold winter months, there would be areas in the sewer that would be positively balmy.

The concerns of infection from the filthy, cesspool conditions are somewhat misplaced as well, due to the incredibly effective immune system that alligators have. Many do not realize just how resistant alligators are to infection. Alligator immune systems are potent, able to take out a vast range of bacteria, viruses, and other dangerous microbes, as well as fungi and other infectious agents. They can even fight off microbes that they have never been previously exposed to. Just a few of the infectious agents that alligator blood has been found to effectively combat are HIV, E. coli, strep, and staph, including the highly methicillin resistant Straphylococcus aureus strain, among many others. Researchers have been increasingly astounded by the infection fighting capabilities inherit in alligators. It’s no wonder that medical researchers are busy trying to figure out the alligator immune system for possible future applications in human patients.

On top of their strong resilience in the face of infection, alligators also display a fast healing rate. These features come in handy in the bacteria infested swamps that alligators inhabit, where they engage in fierce territorial battles. I have no doubt that this contributed greatly to the evolution of these traits. Simply put, the gators that could survive these ferocious battles and subsequently both heal quickly and stave off infections, would be the ones most likely to pass this on to future generations.

So we have food, warmth, and a high resistance to infection, three key things that are stacked in an alligator’s favor when finding itself in the sewers.

There are just a couple of problems I’ve always thought would be hard for an alligator to surmount in order to survive in this environment for any appreciable length of time. These are sunlight and man made chemicals.

Alligators are going to need sunlight in order to make sure they have adequate levels of nutrients derived from it. Now this could come from hanging out near gratings where the sun comes through, but it has been pointed out by the poster Cliff (an engineer with quite some knowledge of sewer systems) that it is no easy task for anything of this size to go back and forth from the upper sewer levels where the sunlight would be, to the lower levels where the warmth would be. I had the impression it was not really possible. I’ve always wondered just how alligators could get around the challenge of the lack of sunlight in the sewers.

The second problem is man made chemicals. Tons of junk gets flushed and dumped into the sewers every day, and the concentration of dangerous chemical compounds down there must surely be high. While alligators show remarkable resistance to microbes and fungi, this is not necessarily true for the toxic chemicals that can be found in detergents, plastics, pesticides, fertilizers, and others. These agents could very possibly disrupt the alligators’ hormone balances and other body processes, which would in turn lead to issues such as the retardation of growth, altered behavior, the disruption of reproductive systems, and other detrimental health conditions.

But these concerns cannot dispute the fact that quite obviously some alligators were indeed down there in the sewers. I’d be interested to see just how long these specific gators mentioned here had been coping in that habitat. I tend to find it quite plausible that gators could survive in the sewers at least temporarily, but I am somewhat curious as to whether they could do so for a long period of time, and if they would at all be capable of a breeding population under these conditions.

But I am indeed open to any possibilities. Anyway, interesting stuff!

In that era it was not uncommon to bring baby gators home from Florida as a pet. This practice went on into the early 1960’s. I remember a family member of mine brought a hatchling home in a suitcase. He thought it was great fun and a lark to have the animal in his room. Eventually, it was donated to a small zoo. It’s not a stretch to imagine some being left free in the sewers of New York. In a time before serious conservation many people didn’t think about the impact on the species.

What intrigues me most about this article is the bronze sculpture. That gator has on a suit and is complete with man’s hands. A copy of that bronze needs to be placed in every state and federal government building. No better representation of the private sector/ public sector relationship has been ever conceived.