Dining Al Fresco
When it's time to eat, alligators are neither hunters nor gatherers. They are lurkers. They wait for something edible to pass nearby and they lunge at it with incredible speed. Using their tails, alligators can push themselves up to five feet out of the water to snag small animals in low-hanging tree branches. Alligators will eat almost anything they can capture -- fish, turtles, frogs, birds, small mammals, and sometimes even larger mammals like deer. Alligators capture all of these creatures by lurking in the water. When lurking, only the eyes and nostrils are above the waterline. This posture will make an alligator lurking in the shadows at a pond's edge nearly impossible to detect. An alligator can sit like this for hours waiting for something edible to wander nearby. When its prey gets close enough, the alligator moves with startling speed.

Image courtesy © Michael Dunning/AGE An alligator lurks in the water.

Besides its eyes and ears, alligators are equipped with skin sensors that are incredibly sensitive to vibration. These tiny black dots make it possible for an alligator to detect anything entering the water or disturbing the surface of the water anywhere nearby. Once an alligator captures something, it will hold it in its mouth and drag it underwater to drown it. It must then get back above water to swallow it -- otherwise, the alligator's stomach and lungs would fill with water. Using its incredibly powerful jaws (which are able to exert up to 2,000 pounds per square inch), an alligator will break bones or crush shells (in the case of turtles) to create a chunk of flesh that can fit down its throat. Then it will raise its head, open the palatal valve and swallow the piece whole. An alligator can digest anything it swallows -- muscle, cartilage and even bone are all digested completely. Unlike humans, alligators don't have to eat very often. A typical feeding schedule for alligators living in the wild is about one feeding per week. Excess calories are stored in fat deposits at the base of the alligator's tail. Incredibly, by burning fat reserves, it is possible for an alligator to last more than two years between feedings.

Use # 997 for Duct Tape Alligators have extremely powerful jaws – when they are biting into something, that is. But, opening their mouths is a different story. Trappers take advantage of this and sometimes use duct tape to secure the jaws of an alligator they are trying to subdue. They're very careful not to cover the alligator's nostrils when doing this, to keep from suffocating the animal.