David Flanagan
David Flanagan是Mozilla的软件工程师,为O'Reilly撰写了若干 著作,包括《JavaScript权威指南》《Ruby编程语言》,以及本版的先前版本。
David Flanagan是一名程序员,也是一名作家,它的个人网站是http://davidflanagan.com。他在O’Reilly出版的其他畅销书还包括《JavaScript Pocket Reference》、《The Ruby Programming Language》以及《Java in a Nutshell》。David毕业于麻省理工学院,获得计算机科学与工程学位。他和妻子和孩子一起生活在西雅图和温哥华之间的美国太平洋西北海岸。
The animal of this book is an alligator. There are only two species of alligator: the American alligator (Alligator
mississippiensis), found in the southeastern coastal plain of the United States, and the smaller Chinese alligator (Alligator sinensis), found in the lower valley of the
Yangtze River. Both alligators are related to the more widely distributed crocodile.
The alligator is a much-studied animal, and so a great deal is known about its life
cycle. Female alligators lay 30 to 80 eggs at a time. The mother allows the sun to
incubate the eggs, but stays nearby. After about 60 days the eggs hatch, and the
young call out for their mother. The mother then carries or leads them to the water,
where they live with her for a year.
Alligators eat a varied diet of insects, fish, shellfish, frogs, water birds, and small
mammals. Alligator attacks on humans are rare. Although normally slow-moving ani-mals,
alligators can charge quickly for short distances when they or their young are
in danger.
Alligators have been hunted extensively for their skin. The American alligator was
placed on the endangered species list in 1969, then declared to be out of danger in
1987. The Chinese alligator remains on the endangered list.