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Though its brain is only the size of a man's thumb, the American alligator has proven highly adaptable since it emerged about 4 million years ago from a line of reptiles that have survived on Earth for 200 million years.

Now found from southeastern Oklahoma and eastern Texas across to North Carolina and Florida, the species can grow to 14 feet long and weigh up to 1,000 pounds during a life span of more than 30 years.

In 1967, after years of overhunting and habitat loss, the American alligator was listed as an endangered species, but conservation efforts and hunting regulations led the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to pronounce it fully recovered 20 years later.