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Dustyn -> RE: I am Soooooooo Pissed.... (5/21/2006 5:26:31 AM)
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ORIGINAL: Najakcharmer
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ORIGINAL: Dustyn
I didn't assign any purely human traits to 'gators in what I posted. They ARE killing machines, pure and simple. Within a week of hatching, even the young are considered prey. They eat their own kind. Dogs, cats, deer. If it's made of meat, it's literally fair game to a 'gator.
Crocodilians aren't human, but they do have a highly complex social structure with amazingly fine degrees of communication and social interaction. Cannibalistic behavior does occur in males, but adult females (including genetically unrelated animals) will actively protect the young in response to specific juvenile vocalizations, and maternal care behaviors are well documented. In some cases (recently documented, still somewhat controversial) mothers will actually bring food to their young while denying adult males access. A "pod" of young alligators is a social association involving one or more adult females who may or may not be genetically related to any of the juveniles, and neonates and juveniles from different clutches over an age range of about three years. Crocodilians are a lot more complex than they may seem, more closely kin to birds and dinosaurs perhaps than to reptiles, certainly in a behavioral sense.
Some crocodilians are pack hunters, showing a fantastic degree of cooperation and coordination that suggests even more complex communication strategies than have already been documented. Crocodilians can voluntarily slow or speed their hearts, change their hearts from four chambered to three chambered at will and constrict blood vessels in a specific area to stop flow to an extremity (or to annoy researchers who want a sample). Some may be capable of generating true endothermic heat in a way that is still poorly understood, though this is another controversial piece of documentation. Could this capability be one of the keys to solving the long running scientific debate about warm blooded dinosaurs and the four chambered, mammal-like dinosaur heart? Some scientists think so.
Almost all crocodilians show what can only be described as a mammal-like response to behavioral conditioning. It takes some species only a few months of regular training to respond reliably with some amazingly complex sets of learned behaviors. Their response to behavioral shaping and clicker or "bridge" training is comparable to that of hooved animals. That's pretty damn impressive from an animal behavior standpoint. Somebody really needs to print a bumper sticker saying, "My croc may be smarter than your horse."
Killing machines? Perhaps. Nature designed them to be frighteningly efficient at what they do. JUST killing machines? Absolutely not. No one who actually knows these animals could agree.
Yes, some crocodilians form hunting packs, but unlike lions, or hyenas, for example, they don't do it in an altruistic manner. Lion prides or wolf packs hunt in groups for the benefit of the entire group. Generally, the only time large groups of crocodialins are spotted, there is also a migration occuring at the same time. Better success in numbers, and frequently kills are fought over nearly as hard as the kill itself. Lame or injured crocodilians are frequently turned into a handy meal by an ambitious cousin.
As to the young, females do tend to care for them for a short period of time, but within the span of only a few months, a scarcity of food will remove any and all 'maternal' instincts and the little crocodile that was once hitching a ride in mommy's mouth will be there for an entirely different reason.
Crocodilians are one of the best living fossils in existance today, competing only with great white sharks for that dubious distinction. They are virtually unchanged, except in size, for roughly 10 million years. Of course they are killing machines. They are amazingly efficient hunters. 10 million yeras is a long time for anything to exist, let alone manage it with only a few minor, in the scope of natural selection and what not, changes in that amount of time. They eat, they breed, and that is almost the extent of their existence. There might be some, but I can't remember any major papers about crocilians, as a whole, forming any communal groups, along with everything that would entail.
I respect the crocodile and alligator immensely. They are brutal, lethal and efficient creatures. They are a creature of power, strength and virility, since they do tend to live longer than the average human, except, of course, for accidents. I respect them enough to gladly say they can have all of Florida if they want it. They were there first, and without some kind of technology, or at least a dump truck full of luck, I'd easily be on the menu without a second thought from one of them.
Everyone's all up in arms about encroaching on cougar land, or bear land, or even wolf ranges. Crocodiles and alligators get the shaft frequently by people that have more money than common sense. I've always voted for leaving them alone. Just as you should let sleeping dogs alone, you should let swimming alligators alone as well.
- Dustyn
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