Getting a very close look at endangered alligators

There are few things in life that are guaranteed to instill fear in your average human. The dark is a classic one, but the 30-million-year-old stare of an alligator has got to be up there, too.

For me personally, it is the Chinese alligator. Not that I'd ever met one before, nor any other crocodilian for that matter. But as Zhou Yongkang, a researcher with the Anhui Chinese Alligator National Nature Reserve Administration, unlocks the enclosure containing hundreds of them and beckons me to enter, I begin to feel the instincts of my ancestors kick in.

Despite having outlived the dinosaurs and numerous extinction-level calamities throughout history, the Chinese alligator is a critically endangered species endemic to China. Sometimes referred to as the Yangtze alligator, they number fewer than 2,000 in the wild, mostly in Anhui province.