well personally I just seemed like it’d
be a lot of fun to work with alligators
I mean they’re these prehistoric
dinosaur looking beasts but we’ve been
approached by a number of researchers
over the years who wanted to do career
cam work – to learn more about
alligators and this after a number of
trials and experiments with captive
alligators the project of James down in
Florida was sort of our reel into the
field serious scientific research
expedition so we study in two locations
NASA and that’s you know Cape Canaveral
and the graters Merritt Island Wildlife
Refuge and the second location was a
shallow s Tryon impoundment up and just
north of st. Augustine so there’s a
variety of methods you can use catch
alligators we try to really minimize the
stress and impact on of alligator when
we capture it just because we’re doing
this for research and we don’t want to
injure the animal or you know stress it
out or anything like that as we’ve
experimented and considered doing critic
and work with alligators and other
crocodilians over the years we’ve tried
to think of good ways to attach the
critter cam now they got this rough
knobbly skin there’s no good easy way
for glues or suction cups like these on
whales or anything else the best idea
that we could think of was some sort of
harness almost where they wear it like a
backpack and so I worked with James and
we worked out an idea with just a simple
thin single strap that would hold the
critter cam on it would be easy to
release because it was a single piece
and we would be able to use a simple
cotton webbing
which we could let go and it wasn’t
something we invested a lot of time and
effort and money and making that harness
so that one strap if it cut it could
drop and we wouldn’t care about getting
it back and we used organic cotton
materials so we wouldn’t be leaving
anything unpleasant in the environment
[Music]
they are reptiles they are as what’s
called cold-blooded they don’t they’re
not highly active like a mammal would be
and they are sit and white predators a
lot of the time we did get some hunting
now it’s not as dramatic as some people
might want to hope we didn’t see them
taking down deer or the wild pigs but we
got a lot of feeding on smaller animals
no one has ever documented in this level
of detail the the feeding rates of these
alligators in their natural environment
and there are apparently a lot of small
items with a little fish or frogs or
some little items sometimes we can’t
tell but they seem to be eating quite a
lot of small things and that’s important
to know for their behavior they’re in
ecology to understand their role in
their environment and what they need to
survive well there’s one video we were
looking at months later and watching the
standard view alligators the surface
we’re looking out over its head that’s
sitting there and it kind of dips to the
side a little bit oddly a couple times
and dips the other side and and that
kind of the view kind of tips and it
goes upside down and you see it land on
the bottom upside down this was an
individual that actually had a portion
of his tail missing and so we called it
stubby was his name and poor stubby was
in some pretty rough water and we think
it actually passed out for a minute just
from getting jostled around and it sank
to the bottom rested on its back and
then swam back up to the surface no
worse for the wear but yeah it was
pretty interesting to see that a
narcoleptic alligator
I just want to thank Crittercam team for
offering me this opportunity to explore
you know the life of alligators you know
in absence of humans is really a fun and
interesting experience and we really
gained a lot of knowledge from it and I
just really want to you know acknowledge
the they really facilitated it and
helped out
you
be a lot of fun to work with alligators
I mean they’re these prehistoric
dinosaur looking beasts but we’ve been
approached by a number of researchers
over the years who wanted to do career
cam work – to learn more about
alligators and this after a number of
trials and experiments with captive
alligators the project of James down in
Florida was sort of our reel into the
field serious scientific research
expedition so we study in two locations
NASA and that’s you know Cape Canaveral
and the graters Merritt Island Wildlife
Refuge and the second location was a
shallow s Tryon impoundment up and just
north of st. Augustine so there’s a
variety of methods you can use catch
alligators we try to really minimize the
stress and impact on of alligator when
we capture it just because we’re doing
this for research and we don’t want to
injure the animal or you know stress it
out or anything like that as we’ve
experimented and considered doing critic
and work with alligators and other
crocodilians over the years we’ve tried
to think of good ways to attach the
critter cam now they got this rough
knobbly skin there’s no good easy way
for glues or suction cups like these on
whales or anything else the best idea
that we could think of was some sort of
harness almost where they wear it like a
backpack and so I worked with James and
we worked out an idea with just a simple
thin single strap that would hold the
critter cam on it would be easy to
release because it was a single piece
and we would be able to use a simple
cotton webbing
which we could let go and it wasn’t
something we invested a lot of time and
effort and money and making that harness
so that one strap if it cut it could
drop and we wouldn’t care about getting
it back and we used organic cotton
materials so we wouldn’t be leaving
anything unpleasant in the environment
[Music]
they are reptiles they are as what’s
called cold-blooded they don’t they’re
not highly active like a mammal would be
and they are sit and white predators a
lot of the time we did get some hunting
now it’s not as dramatic as some people
might want to hope we didn’t see them
taking down deer or the wild pigs but we
got a lot of feeding on smaller animals
no one has ever documented in this level
of detail the the feeding rates of these
alligators in their natural environment
and there are apparently a lot of small
items with a little fish or frogs or
some little items sometimes we can’t
tell but they seem to be eating quite a
lot of small things and that’s important
to know for their behavior they’re in
ecology to understand their role in
their environment and what they need to
survive well there’s one video we were
looking at months later and watching the
standard view alligators the surface
we’re looking out over its head that’s
sitting there and it kind of dips to the
side a little bit oddly a couple times
and dips the other side and and that
kind of the view kind of tips and it
goes upside down and you see it land on
the bottom upside down this was an
individual that actually had a portion
of his tail missing and so we called it
stubby was his name and poor stubby was
in some pretty rough water and we think
it actually passed out for a minute just
from getting jostled around and it sank
to the bottom rested on its back and
then swam back up to the surface no
worse for the wear but yeah it was
pretty interesting to see that a
narcoleptic alligator
I just want to thank Crittercam team for
offering me this opportunity to explore
you know the life of alligators you know
in absence of humans is really a fun and
interesting experience and we really
gained a lot of knowledge from it and I
just really want to you know acknowledge
the they really facilitated it and
helped out
you
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