Gatorama
Gatorama is an alligator farm and visitor attraction in Palmdale, Florida, USA. Alligators and crocodiles are raised on the farm for meat and skins. Gatorama is one of Florida's oldest roadside attractions. Only six alligator farms are open to the public as attractions. History Cecil Clemons opened the farm in 1957. The alligators were captured locally in the 1960s. Wild crocodiles were caught in Jamaica in 1967-1968. Allen and Patty Register acquired the property in 2006. Attractions Visitors can hold baby alligators as well as pythons. Adult participants can perform the "Fast Hands Challenge" to feed an adult alligator. The daily feed show is free with admission, where guests can watch keepers hand feed alligators from the front bridge. Gatorama has an exhibit dedicated to the critically endangered subspecies Orinoco crocodile (''Crocodylus intermedius''). The park works with Florida Fish and Wildlife's Statewide Nuisance Alligator Program (SNAP) program to rehome nuisa ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Palmdale, Florida
Palmdale is an unincorporated community in Glades County, Florida, United States, located on US 27 just north of the junction with State Road 29. Originally part of DeSoto County, Palmdale's land was pioneered by Florida Fruit Farm Corporation, selling the land to the Palmdale Land Company, which sold the land to five-hundred settlers, creating the first community in 1911. Many farmers were "discouraged" by the lack of transportation, prompting them to move out of the area by 1917. Many of these farmers left their homes behind, along with their personal belongings and furniture. New farmers and pioneers to the area would take up residence in the abandoned homesteads. Eventually, wildfires destroyed many of the original homesteads. The earliest descriptions of Palmdale describe residents that "can-do, make-do, and out-do," which are "Crackers to the core, with staunch tradition of loyalty to God, family, home and country." The "Tin Lizzie Trail," two dirt roads connected Ar ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Alligator Farm
A crocodile farm or alligator farm is an establishment for breeding and raising of crocodilians in order to produce crocodile and alligator meat, leather from crocodile and alligator skin, and other goods. Many species of both alligators and crocodiles are farmed internationally. In Louisiana alone, alligator farming is a $60 to $70 million industry. History Alligators and crocodiles are not truly domesticated and their being bred in farms probably began as late as the early 20th century. Most of the early businesses, such as St. Augustine Alligator Farm Zoological Park, established in 1893, were farms in name only, primarily keeping alligators and crocodiles as a tourist attraction. Only in the 1960s did commercial operations that either harvested eggs from the wild or bred alligators on-site begin to appear. This was largely driven by diminishing stocks of wild alligators, which had been hunted nearly to extinction by that time. As the American alligator was placed unde ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Alligator
An alligator is a large reptile in the Crocodilia order in the genus ''Alligator'' of the family Alligatoridae. The two extant species are the American alligator (''A. mississippiensis'') and the Chinese alligator (''A. sinensis''). Additionally, several extinct species of alligator are known from fossil remains. Alligators first appeared during the Oligocene epoch about 37 million years ago. The name "alligator" is probably an anglicized form of ', the Spanish term for "the lizard", which early Spanish explorers and settlers in Florida called the alligator. Later English spellings of the name included ''allagarta'' and ''alagarto''. Evolution Alligators and caimans split in North America during the early Tertiary or late Cretaceous (about 53 million to about 65 million years ago). The Chinese alligator split from the American alligator about 33 million years ago and probably descended from a lineage that crossed the Bering land bridge during the Neogene. The modern ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Crocodile
Crocodiles (family (biology), family Crocodylidae) or true crocodiles are large semiaquatic reptiles that live throughout the tropics in Africa, Asia, the Americas and Australia. The term crocodile is sometimes used even more loosely to include all extant taxon, extant members of the order (biology), order Crocodilia, which includes the alligators and caimans (family Alligatoridae), the gharial and false gharial (family Gavialidae) among other extinct taxa. Although they appear similar, crocodiles, alligators and the gharial belong to separate biological family (biology), families. The gharial, with its narrow snout, is easier to distinguish, while Morphology (biology), morphological differences are more difficult to spot in crocodiles and alligators. The most obvious external differences are visible in the head, with crocodiles having narrower and longer heads, with a more V-shaped than a U-shaped snout compared to alligators and caimans. Another obvious trait is that the upp ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Roadside Attraction
A roadside attraction is a feature along the side of a road meant to attract tourists. In general, these are places one might stop on the way to somewhere, rather than actually being a destination. They are frequently advertised with billboards. The modern tourist-oriented highway attraction originated as a U.S. and Canadian phenomenon in the 1940s to 1960s, and subsequently caught on in Australia. History When long-distance road travel became practical and popular in the 1920s, entrepreneurs began building restaurants, motels, coffee shops, cafes and more unusual businesses to attract travelers. Many of the buildings were attractions in themselves in the form of novelty architecture, depicting common objects of enormous size, typically relating to the items sold there. Some other types of roadside attractions include monuments and fictionalised-paranormal/illusionary amusements such as the Mystery Spot near Santa Cruz, California, or curiosities such as The Thing? along Inters ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Orinoco Crocodile
The Orinoco crocodile (''Crocodylus intermedius'') is a critically endangered crocodile. Its population is very small, and they can only be found in the Orinoco river basin in Colombia and Venezuela. Extensively hunted for their skins in the 19th and 20th centuries, it is one of the most endangered species of crocodiles. It is a very large species of crocodilian; males have been reported up to in the past, but such sizes do not exist today, being a more widely accepted maximum size. A large male today may attain in length and can weigh up to , while females are substantially smaller with the largest likely to weigh around . Sexual dimorphism is not as profound as in other crocodilian species. The coloration is light even in adults. The biology of the Orinoco crocodile is poorly documented in the wild, mostly due its small population. It is thought to have a more piscivorous diet with an opportunistic nature, resulting in generalist predatory behavior. The Orinoco crocodile is ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Florida Fish And Wildlife Conservation Commission
The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (FWC) is a Florida government agency founded in 1999 and headquartered in Tallahassee. It manages and regulates the state's fish and wildlife resources, and enforces related laws. Officers are managers, researchers, and support personnel, and perform law enforcement in the course of their duties. History In 1998, an amendment to the Florida Constitution approved the establishment of the FWC with a headquarters in Tallahassee, the state capital, on July 1, 1999. It resulted from a merger between three former offices, namely the Marine Fisheries Commission, Division of Marine Resources, the former Florida Marine Patrol, and the Division of Law Enforcement of the Florida Department of Environmental Protection, and all of the employees and commissioners of the former Florida Game and Freshwater Fish Commission. The Florida Department of Environmental Protection since then serves as the environmental regulatory agency for the ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Florida Panther
The Florida panther is a North American cougar (''P. c. couguar'') population in South Florida. It lives in pinelands, tropical hardwood hammocks, and mixed freshwater swamp forests. It is known under a number of common names including Costa Rican puma, Florida cougar, and Florida puma. Males can weigh up to and live within a range that includes the Big Cypress National Preserve, Everglades National Park, the Florida Panther National Wildlife Refuge, Picayune Strand State Forest, rural communities of Collier County, Florida, Hendry County, Florida, Lee County, Florida, Miami-Dade County, Florida, and Monroe County, Florida. It is the only confirmed cougar population in the Eastern United States, and currently occupies 5% of its historic range. In the 1970s, an estimated 20 Florida panthers remained in the wild, but their numbers had increased to an estimated 230 by 2017. In 1982, the Florida panther was chosen as the Florida state animal. Description Florida panthers are sp ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Tourist Attractions In Glades County, Florida
Tourism is travel for pleasure or business; also the theory and practice of touring, the business of attracting, accommodating, and entertaining tourists, and the business of operating tours. The World Tourism Organization defines tourism more generally, in terms which go "beyond the common perception of tourism as being limited to holiday activity only", as people "travelling to and staying in places outside their usual environment for not more than one consecutive year for leisure and not less than 24 hours, business and other purposes". Tourism can be domestic (within the traveller's own country) or international, and international tourism has both incoming and outgoing implications on a country's balance of payments. Tourism numbers declined as a result of a strong economic slowdown (the late-2000s recession) between the second half of 2008 and the end of 2009, and in consequence of the outbreak of the 2009 H1N1 influenza virus, but slowly recovered until the COVID-19 pa ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Zoos In Florida
A zoo (short for zoological garden; also called an animal park or menagerie) is a facility in which animals are kept within enclosures for public exhibition and often bred for conservation purposes. The term ''zoological garden'' refers to zoology, the study of animals. The term is derived from the Greek , , 'animal', and the suffix , , 'study of'. The abbreviation ''zoo'' was first used of the London Zoological Gardens, which was opened for scientific study in 1828 and to the public in 1847."Landmarks in ZSL History" , Zoological Society of London. In the alone, zoos are visited by over 181 million people annually. Etymology [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |