Gatorland, The Alligators Great White Hope

With its iconic Gator mouth entrance you know you will be venturing into a theme park that will do more than just flash its white teeth at you. GatorLand is an 110 acre theme park and wildlife preserve located along the South Blossom Trail in Orlando. The park was established by Owen Godwin in 1949 and is still privately owned by his family today. It is coined as the 'Alligator Capital of the World', and is a place that features over thousands of alligators and crocodiles as well as a breeding marsh with a board walk and a observation tower. There are one of a kind reptile shows, nature walks, aviary and a petting zoo. There are also some other things that get people involved such as a miniature water park, Lilly's Pad that is a children's splash zone and playground. Also for those who want to learn about creatures there are educational programs. At Gatorland there are live shows which that will be fun for all of the family, there you can watch the unique way of feeding the alligators with the world famous Gator Jumparoo or get up close with Animal Encounters or watch a good olé fashion Gator wrestlin' show.

The park is known for leucistic alligators, which are pale white alligators with blue eyes. There are 5 million Alligators in the world but only 12 of them are leucistic and Gatorland has four kept in their park. They were collected from the Louisiana swamp, the ivory reptiles were a part of 17 infants that were recovered by workers from the Louisiana Land and Exploration Company who had been surveying the area in 1986. They later brought hatchings to the Audubon Zoo in New Orleans only a few of the reptiles survived before they where moved top Gatorland in 2008.

This is the largest group of Giant white Alligators in the world , they are often confuse with being albino which is not the case as they have a little bit of pigmentation and a little tough on the tail and piercing blue eyes. It is a rare genetic condition that reduces the colour pigmentation in their skin. Other than them being Leucistic there is nothing different about them they eat the same food as normal alligators such as chicken, fish, red meat and vitamin supplements. But because they are white and only ten to eleven plus feet, they are vulnerable to many predators. The lack of pigmentation deprives them of natural camouflage.

They also have have to be housed in special enclosures to protect them from sunlight, although they still get a bit of sunlight and also because they are all male alligators it keeps them from fighting with others. The team at the park are hoping they could breed more white Alligators as there two female alligators that have the leucistic gene in them.

The Park draws roughly 400,000 visitors every year which is good especially as Orlando is a place filled with loads of attractions that can easily make Gatorland a place that is overlooked. Such places as the Disney world resorts and the Universal studios resorts. So if you want to see the world's rarest Alligator's in the world you its only an Orlando vacation rentals away.