{"id":2347,"date":"2014-11-24T00:43:13","date_gmt":"2014-11-24T00:43:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/?p=2347"},"modified":"2014-11-24T00:43:13","modified_gmt":"2014-11-24T00:43:13","slug":"the-unknown-crocodiles","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/the-unknown-crocodiles\/","title":{"rendered":"The unknown crocodiles"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Vladimir Dinets<\/a>, University of Tennessee<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

Just a few years ago, crocodilians \u2013 crocodiles, alligators and their less-known relatives \u2013 were mostly thought of as slow, lazy, and outright stupid animals. You may have thought something like that yourself the last time you were in a zoo and saw them lying still for hours, making people wonder if they were alive or made of plastic.<\/p>\n

But people who worked with crocodilians \u2013 zoologists, breeders, animal trainers, tribal hunters \u2013 knew that these animals were capable of amazing things. And recently this knowledge has finally found support in the form of scientific publications.<\/p>\n

\n \"\"<\/a>
\n Mugger crocodile using sticks to lure egrets.<\/span>
\n Vladimir Dinets<\/span>, Author provided<\/span><\/span>
\n <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>\n

Now we know that crocodilians have a weird communication system<\/a> composed of chemical signals, various calls, infrasound vibrations too low for us to hear, and body language. They can take care of their babies for more than a year, feeding them<\/a>, protecting them, even putting them together in cr\u00e8ches<\/a> \u2013 like daycare centers protected in turn by many parents. They can disperse seeds<\/a> of rainforest trees. They can bond with certain people<\/a> and play with them. They can use little sticks<\/a> to lure egrets looking for nesting material. And they can hunt in teams<\/a>, each animal playing the role best suited for its size and agility; for example, large adult alligators can drive fish into shallows where small, agile youngsters lie in ambush.<\/p>\n

\n \"\"<\/a>
\n Mugger crocodiles swimming in a circle to drive fish into a bait ball. One cuts across the circle to snatch fish.<\/span>
\n Vladimir Dinets<\/span>, Author provided<\/span><\/span>
\n <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>\n

How they\u2019ve maintained their mystique<\/h2>\n

Why are these amazing facts only coming to light now? There are many reasons.<\/p>\n

First, scientists don\u2019t study natural history<\/a> as much as they used to. To get your research financed<\/a> nowadays, it seems you need to be testing a fancy theory, or using a new technology, or contributing to some major cause such as finding cure for cancer, stopping global warming, or slowing down the ongoing mass extinction. You don\u2019t get paid for just watching animals<\/a>, no matter how cool the stuff is that you\u2019re discovering.<\/p>\n

Of course, this is a fundamentally wrong approach; it is impeding not just the science, but also our ability to fix major problems such as the mass extinction, because we no longer have the basic data on which our fancy theories should be based.<\/p>\n

\n \"\"<\/a>
\n American aligators dancing.<\/span>
\n Vladimir Dinets<\/span>, Author provided<\/span><\/span>
\n <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>\n

Second, crocodilian behavior is extremely difficult to see, especially in the wild. These are nocturnal animals living in swamps and muddy rivers, mostly in the tropics. Few people dare work there at night, and even fewer know how to observe nocturnal animals without disturbing them. These things aren\u2019t taught in most universities. You can do your research in a zoo, but it\u2019s not the same because many forms of behavior can only be seen in wild animals.<\/p>\n

Third, time doesn\u2019t flow for crocodilians like it does for us mammals. We are warm-blooded, so we need a lot of energy<\/a> to keep our body temperature constant, and that makes us constantly hungry and active. Compared to us, crocodilians are the Taoist sages of the animal world. They lie back, conserve energy<\/a> and silently absorb information about their surroundings. Eventually the moment comes when they decide it\u2019s time for action, and when they do, they can make Jurassic Park\u2019s velociraptors look like plucked chickens.<\/p>\n

But to see this action, you have to spend weeks, months, sometimes years feeding mosquitoes in the swamps. Some Nile crocodiles, for example, hunt only once a year, during the wildebeest migration. Few scientists can afford to commit to a project where you get data once a year, if at all. Even if you somehow manage to get a grant for this, you\u2019ll run out of money long before having something to show for it.<\/p>\n

\n \"\"<\/a>
\n I may be elusive but there\u2019s plenty to discover about me and my brethren\u2026.<\/span>
\n Mika Mamy<\/a><\/span>
\n <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>\n

Embrace the challenge<\/h2>\n

The only way you can do it is by thinking out of the box. I write books<\/a> and sell my photos to finance my research. I use Facebook to survey people who don\u2019t usually publish their observations in scientific journals: hunters, tour guides, zoo directors, amateur naturalists. I\u2019ve learned to be as comfortable in a tropical swamp at night as I am in my apartment on a winter evening with the fireplace on and the coffee brewing.<\/p>\n

Studying crocodilians is no longer a challenge for me \u2013 it\u2019s pure fun. And the best part of it is that there\u2019s still a lot to be discovered and understood. We\u2019ve just scratched the surface.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/p>\n

Vladimir Dinets does not work for, consult to, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has no relevant affiliations.<\/em><\/p>\n

This article was originally published on The Conversation<\/a>.
\n Read the original article<\/a>.\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Vladimir Dinets, University of Tennessee Just a few years ago, crocodilians \u2013 crocodiles, alligators and their less-known relatives \u2013 were mostly thought of as slow, lazy, and outright stupid animals. You may have thought something like that yourself the last time you were in a zoo and saw them lying still for hours, making […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":39,"featured_media":2348,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[118],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2347"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/39"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2347"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2347\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2350,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2347\/revisions\/2350"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2348"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2347"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2347"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2347"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}