![]() ![]() Larger alligators would drive a fish from the deeper part of a lake into the shallows, where smaller, more agile alligators would block its escape. Sometimes animals of different size would take up different roles. For example, crocodiles would swim in a circle around a shoal of fish, gradually making the circle tighter until the fish were forced into a tight "bait ball." Then the crocodiles would take turns cutting across the center of the circle, snatching the fish. This suggests that the observed phenomena are real, rather than just tall tales or misinterpretation," said Dinets.Ĭrocodiles and alligators were observed conducting highly organized game drives. "Despite having been made independently by different people on different continents, these records showed striking similarities. Still, the observations had something in common - coordination and collaboration among the crocodiles in hunting their prey. He also looked through diaries of scientists and conducted more than 3,000 hours of observations himself.Īll that work produced just a handful of observations, some dating back to the 19th century. To overcome these difficulties, Dinets used Facebook and other social media sites to solicit eyewitness accounts from amateur naturalists, crocodile researchers and nonscientists working with crocodiles. Accidental observations of their hunting behavior are often made by non-specialists and remain unpublished or appear in obscure journals. In addition, they are mostly nocturnal and often hunt in murky, overgrown waters of remote tropical rivers and swamps. Studying predatory behavior by crocodiles and their relatives such as alligators and caimans in the wild is notoriously difficult because they are ambush hunters, have slow metabolisms and eat much less frequently than warm-blooded animals. ![]() His research tapped into the power of social media to document such behavior. Vladimir Dinets, a research assistant professor in UT's Department of Psychology, has found that crocodiles work as a team to hunt their prey. New University of Tennessee, Knoxville, research published in the journal Ethology Ecology and Evolution shows just how sophisticated their hunting techniques can be. ![]()
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