The Animals of the Gulf Coat By Group # Name 1 Name 2 Name 3 Name 4 Name 5

The Alligator The alligator is a large, leathery-skinned reptile. Alligators are fascinating animals. Their ancestors were around before dinosaurs even existed! These powerful reptiles are carnivorous, meaning that they eat other animals. Some of the animals they eat include fish, turtles, water birds, and other alligators. Alligators are very vocal. They communicate with each other using grunts, barks, or hisses. They often float with only their eyes and nostrils visible in the water. The alligator’s short, strong legs allow it to travel on land. Its tail helps it swim.

Sea Turtle Sea turtles live in warm coastal waters. The largest of all turtles are the sea turtles. Some sea turtles can grow as big as a car and weigh up to 850 pounds! Sea turtles have hard, bony shells. Unlike other turtles that live on the land, sea turtles can’t hide in their shells for protection. Instead, they have to rely on their enormous size and swimming speed to escape predators. Male sea turtles spend their whole lives in the water. The females only leave the water to lay eggs. Females will sometimes migrate thousands of miles to get to their breeding beaches.

Tiger Sharks A Tiger Shark can become up to 20 feet (6 metres) long, but the average size is 10 feet (3 metres). Its body is large and thick, with a blunt snout. The Tiger Shark has a long and rather pointy caudal fin, and there is a dermal ridge to be seen along the back of the Tiger Shark, between the two dorsal fins. The second dorsal fin is considerably shorter than the first one. The teeth of a Tiger Shark are extremely serrated, like the edge of a saw. They are also razor- sharp and curved, and located in four rows that will rotate into use when necessary.

Bottlenose Dolphin Bottlenose dolphins may be seen in groups numbering up to several hundred but smaller social units of two to 15 are more common. Group size is affected by habitat structure and tends to increase with water depth. Group members interact closely and are highly cooperative in feeding, protective, and nursery activities. These dolphins make numerous sounds and are probably both good echolocators and highly communicative. Bottlenose dolphins eat a wide variety of food items depending on what is available and abundant at a given time. In Texas waters they eat fishes including tarpon, sailfish, sharks, speckled trout, pike, rays, mullet, and catfish. They are also known to eat anchovies, menhaden, minnows, shrimp, and eel. They eat about kg of fish each day. Commonly observed feeding behaviors include foraging around shrimp boats, either working or not, to feed on fish attracted to the boats.

The Crab No bigger than a thumb, a sand crab spends most of its time buried in shifting sand. Well camouflaged by its gray shell, a sand crab keeps its balance in the ever-moving sand with the help of a heavily armored, curved body and pointy legs. To stay put in the sand, a crab burrows quickly and often. While most crabs move in any direction—forward, backward and sideways—a sand crab moves only backward. And a sand crab has no claws on its first pair of legs—another unusual feature for a crab.

Jelly Fish Jellyfish have been around for more than 650 million years which means that they outdate both dinosaurs and sharks. Jellyfish and their bodies consists of over 95% water. The worlds largest known jellyfish can reach a diameter of 2.5 m / 8ft and its tentacles can grow to be half the length of a football field.

Sea Gull The seagull is perhaps best known as being a scavenger. It is most often seen in large, noisy flocks congregating wherever food is available. They can almost always be found around fishing boats, picnic grounds, parking lots and garbage dumps. Many people consider the gull to be a nuisance, but they actually perform a very valuable service. They are garbage men with wings. They scavenge up great numbers of dead animals and organic litter which could pose a health threat to humans.

Pelican Pelicans do not store fish in their pouch, but simply use it to catch them and then tip it back to drain out water and swallow the fish immediately. The American white pelican can hold some 3 gallons (11 1/2 liters) of water in its bill. Young pelicans feed by sticking their bills into their parents' throats to retrieve food.

Bull Shark Bull sharks are the most dangerous sharks in the world, according to many experts. This is because they're an aggressive species of shark, and they tend to hunt in waters where people often swim: along tropical shorelines. Bull sharks live throughout the world, in shallow, warm ocean waters. They're even known to swim up into freshwater rivers.

Amberjack Fish Greater amberjacks have dark stripes that extend from the nose to the dorsal fin and no scutes. Lesser amberjacks have a proportionally larger eye and deeper body, and may have a dark band extending upward from the eyes. Banded rudderfish are sometimes mistaken for pilotfish because they have similar vertical bands, but can be distinguished by the presence of a dorsal fin. Greater amberjacks like rocky reefs, bridges, shipwrecks, and areas of debris, and are sometimes caught near shore around south Florida. Lesser amberjacks prefer deeper water than other jacks.

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