Alligators use lungs to sneak up on prey

Anyone knows how do the alligator hunt for their prey? New study had came out with alligator using lungs to sneak up on prey! Interesting!

Until recently, no one knew how alligators managed to sneak up on prey with scarcely a ripple to reveal their presence. Now we know they use their lungs to dive, surface and roll in water.

It was a mystery as to how alligators "manage to maneuver so gracefully without the fins and flippers used by fish, seals and other adept swimmers," said researcher C.G. Farmer, a biologist at the University of Utah at Salt Lake City.

The researchers noticed alligators seemed to have a lot of muscles devoted to breathing. "They really didn't need all those muscles for breathing, so we wanted to see what else they might be doing with them," said researcher T.J. Uriona, also a University of Utah biologist.

Farmer and Uriona investigated five American alligators (Alligator mississippiensis), each 2 years old, from Louisiana's Rockefeller Wildlife Refuge. The gators were just 15 to 20 inches long. In comparison, adults can reach 15 feet.

Electrodes were implanted on sets of muscles in the alligators so their activity could be monitored while the reptiles maneuvered in warm water in 100-gallon tanks. The researchers also duct-taped weights made of buckshot pellets under the reptiles' jaws or at the base of their tails that totaled about one-fortieth of each gator's weight, providing a bit of added stress to help the electrodes better detect how the muscles worked.

Farmer and Uriona focused on special muscles the alligators used to manipulate the position of their lungs. Until now, it was believed these muscles evolved to help gators breathe and run at the same time, Uriona said.

"It may be that instead of these muscles arising for breathing, they arose for moving around in the water and later were co-opted for breathing," he explained.

The lungs act as flotation airbags. By moving the lungs around, the muscles alter the center of buoyancy of the alligators. The researchers found moving the lungs toward the tail helped the gators dive; toward the head helped them surface; and toward one side or the other helped them roll sideways. The tail also helped the reptiles roll.