The alligator gar is a big attraction at the National Mississippi River Museum & Aquarium.
The alligator gar is one of the largest fish at the Mississippi River Museum & Aquarium.
The alligator gar is one of the largest fish at the Mississippi River Museum & Aquarium.
The alligator gar is one of the largest fish at the Mississippi River Museum & Aquarium.
If one of the largest fish at Dubuque’s National Mississippi River Museum & Aquarium looks like it should be swimming around in prehistoric times, that’s because its relatives did just that.
The alligator gar “is almost a living dinosaur,” said Jacob Harmon, an aquarist I at the river museum.
The Telegraph Herald is regularly providing a closer look at animals at the museum. This week’s profile takes a look at one of the largest freshwater fish in America.
The river museum has one alligator gar in the large, main channel aquarium, where it swims with other, smaller types of gar, sturgeon and catfish.
Here are five facts about the alligator gar:
Alligator gars can grow to 6 to 10 feet in length.
“This alligator gar is about 7 feet long and about 200 pounds,” Harmon said.
Museum staff members don’t know the age of the Dubuque alligator gar, nor do they know its gender. Alligator gar in the wild can live as many as 50 years.
Their American range is rivers in the southern states.
“Their most-northern established population now is in northeastern Arkansas,” Harmon said.
The alligator gar has a long, slender body and a head that is reminiscent of an alligator’s — mostly because of its large mouth and sharp teeth.
“They eat fish, mostly, and they are known to eat whatever fits into their mouth,” Harmon said. “They have a bit of an articulated mouth, so they can expand their mouth, not quite like a snake, but they can grab a little bit of larger prey.”
Harmon describes the alligator gar as an “ambush predator.”
“They don’t really go after their prey,” he said. “They will sit in the water and wait for prey to come to them.”
Although the alligator gar eats mostly fish, Harmon has never seen it eat another fish in the main channel aquarium.
“I’ve seen other fish bump into it and it just sits there. It really doesn’t mind,” he said. “The most aggressive fish in here are the catfish, actually.”
Harmon noted that gar prefer to breathe atmospheric oxygen. This adaptation enables gar to live in water with low oxygen levels, such as backwater sloughs.
“They will come up (to the top of the tank), grab a gulp of air at the surface, and they will go back down,” Harmon said. “Their swim bladder lets them diffuse that oxygen throughout their body, without using their gills.”
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