September 30, 2021 • 51 mins
Here at SYSK, we love alligators? Why? Because they're basically living dinosaurs. Dive in (metaphorically) and swim with these beasts today!
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of I
Heart Radio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark,
and there's Charles W. Chuck Bryant. Couldn't come up with
a jokey nickname. Jerry's here to everybody. Uh, and this
(00:22):
is stuff you should know the um that's not a
Noith edition. So uh. After researching alligators and looking at
a lot of videos of alligators, you're an expert on alligators,
I'm an expert. No. Um. I had seen plenty of
(00:43):
alligator footage and things, and I never really just sat
and really really watched them for long. And once you
do that, you cannot help. But just think, what era
am I living in here to be watching this weird,
crazy looking dinosaur dragon beast walking along? Okay, Like you
(01:09):
gotta see him walk, like seeing him swimming around, that's great,
But when you see them walking around with their bellies
off the ground, it looks crazy. Yeah, especially if you
have the theme to the Alfred Hitchcock shows playing alongside
of it works really well. They look crazy. It looks
like it doesn't look like something that should be walking
(01:31):
along on today's Earth. Did you know that the theme
from the Alfred Hitchcock show is called The March of
the Marionettes. I didn't know that. It is, all right,
how does it go? Dude? Do do Do Do Do
Do Do Do Do Do Do do good evening, do
do do do do do do do. It's so nice
(01:51):
you can't sing. Have you seen an alligator in real
life in the wild? Uh? Yeah, sure. I talked about
it at one point when I did my Oky Finoki
swamp paddle and we woke up in the morning on
our camping pad that they just have stationed periodically along
the canoe trail. Well, now we know those things must
(02:12):
be at least five ft above the water, right, Well,
I tell you, I don't know if it was or not.
But now that I've read this that they can jump
out of the water that high, I think it's just
not something they often do. But you know, we woke
up surrounded by alligators growling at us or groaning or
whatever they're doing. It's just sort of a are you
(02:36):
sure they were alligators and not crocodiles? I'm almost sure,
and I have a little bit of statistics to back
that up. Um. Even though the Okay finok is not Florida.
I think there are about I'm sorry, yeah, it wouldn't
have been crocodiles. Um about ten if I'm sorry. Five
million American alligators one point to five million in Florida,
(02:59):
whereas Florida only has about a hundred crocodiles. I'm sorry,
a thousand. Cheez, I get this all wrong. One point
two five million alligators in Florida, one thousand crocodiles. And
that's the only place on Earth where crocodiles and alligators
live in the same place. Yeah, down in the Everglades. Yeah,
there's evergladiers just like whatever, man bring it. And it's
not nile crocodiles. There's a specific kind of crocodile called
(03:22):
the American crocodile, just like there's the American alligator. It
just sounds like the the Is that a crocodile or
an alligator? I think it's an all like I think
it's a gaddile. I remember that poster from the eighties.
It said, like, save an alligator, eat a preppy. That's right,
what is your tattoo? Say? Oh? Wait, wrong one. It
(03:44):
clearly has the rounded snout. We'll get to the difference
between them. This is mainly about alligators though, uh as
as these like I just called them almost dinosaurs. Yeah,
you're you're amazed by that. It came through in the
article you put together. Yeah, it's amazing. Or dragons, Like
whenever you see the closeup of a dragon, they have
(04:06):
that same sort of scale male armoring. Chucky realized that
dragons are made up by humans who have probably seen alligators,
right exactly. I think we probably talked about that in
our Dragons episode. Surely we did. So let's let's talk
about gators. Huh. Yeah, we are talking gators and they
like I love among them, Like there's one like just
(04:27):
outside of my condo and the ponds that we have here,
and figured them a lot around here. You just have
to like be on your guard, just knowing when you're
walking a little moment around not alongside bushes you can't
see through and just stuff like that. Don't walk her
around a pond. Um, just have to be a little
extra smart, and they generally tend to leave you alone. Right,
(04:49):
but stick to inner city parking lots exactly. That's the
only place she's put her in the car, drive into
the city, let her out, and put her back him.
So um, like they're fascinating in and of themselves. It
never ceases to amaze me to look at an alligator.
But um, I've had no idea how amazing they actually are.
And one of the things that you put put down
(05:10):
there was that they have intensely small brains, like the
average alligators many feet long ten nine to eleven feet
long probably on average, um often quite longer, but that
their brain is only like eight or nine grahams. And
then this how Stuff Works article, it says that would
take up one half of a tablespoon, So it's a
(05:32):
really small brain. And on the one hand, that means
that like if you had an alligator as a pet,
which is a terrible idea. It's a terrible, terrible idea,
like that alligator is never going to come to love you.
Or two, there's never going to be a point where
you can let your guard down and relax because this
alligator is not going to eat The alligator would eat
(05:52):
you like the first moment it occurred to it to
eat you. Right, Yeah, But they're so they're killing machines
in that sense, they're like mindless killing machines. But at
the same time, there is a lot of anecdotal evidence
that they are way smarter than they should be for
having a brain the size of half of a table spoon.
(06:14):
They can do things like climb chain link fences. Do
you ever see a video of that? Terrifying? They can
climb trees. Um. They have been shown to be able
to figure out how to escape enclosures, like not randomly either,
like looking for ways out, and can actually like manipulate
manipulate vents and stuff like that. And somebody found that
(06:37):
they use tools and that they will put sticks on
their snouts, like they'll gather sticks on their snouts and
um yeah to uh to attract migratory birds who might
be nesting, so that they might come to grab a
stick and then the alligator gets them. It's way smarter
than you would think for something that has a brain
(06:58):
the size of a half of a table spoon. Yeah
the uh. Some of this came from the House stu
Works article I believe written by House of Works founder
Marshall Brain. Oh boy, uh ben a while since I've
read one of those. But he called them instinctual living machines,
which I think is a great band name. But what
he basically means is if an alligator is hungry. It's
(07:21):
gonna eat something, period. Like that's all. It's sort of
like the description of the great white shark and jaws,
Like all it does is swim and eat like an
alligator basically just wants to eat and hang around. Uh.
They are reptiles members of the Crocodilia order, of which
there are twenty three different species, including those crocodiles of
(07:44):
different stripes and sizes and caymans, which we're not really
going to talk about much in here. The poor cayman
never gets any of the it's like, but the Crocodilia
as we know it, and that body for has been
around for more than a hundred and eighty million years, uh,
(08:05):
which you know is you got that big head, you
got that big lizard like body, you got those little
stubby legs. And when they bring that belly off the
ground to walk on them, it looks super greepy. And
they got that big long tail that looks like it
was just made for for whacking things. Yes, and the
tail um keeps getting bigger and bigger and bigger as
(08:26):
the gator grows. Um, and it might not usually I
think tops out at maturity. I think when they reach
sexual maturities about the time they they stopped growing. They
used to think that they alligator would just grow indefinitely
as it aged goldfish. Yeah, but now there's like a
top size for it. They realize. Um, but the tail
(08:47):
might not keep getting longer, but it can keep getting
fatter because that's where the gator stores it's fat. It's
fat reserves. Any excess energy gets stored in its tail,
which is one of the things that makes gator tail
so ridiculously delicious if you're into that kind of thing. Yeah,
and you mentioned, Uh, they can grow on average about
eleven feet as if they're male five to seven hundred pounds.
(09:11):
The ladies are a little shorter. They're about eight feet
long and way about half as much. But um, there
was one that I had looked up. I think it's
still alive. Um, if the Alligator Adventures, Gator Park and
Myrtle Beaches, they're at least not advertising that utan has
passed away. Yeah, he looked like he was still there
based on their website. I think so unless they're just like,
(09:32):
don't tell anyone Utan died, and you know, we're just
trying to get people in the door. They just have
an intern wearing Utan's right. Well, Utan, my friends, was
born in nineteen sixty four, and it's just over eighteen
feet long and weighs two thousand pounds. And if you
want to see something that looks like it, it's c
g I from a movie. Just go look at Utan
(09:54):
and how big this thing is. And watch the people
in the in the cage with Utan feeding at those
skinned rabbits. Wow, I mean they're in there in Utan.
I guess is the deal is, as long as you're
feeding Utan, you can do this show. Uh. And I
guess we should go ahead and tell people that, I mean,
now is a good time to say that they don't
(10:14):
eat that much for as big as they are. It's
very surprising how little an alligator needs to eat to survive. Um.
They I think they feed this thing a rabbit. You know,
it's got to be uh in bite sized chunks. They
can't you know, it's not like a python that can
swallow these eat these big things whole. Although it did
see a video of a python eating an alligator, which
(10:35):
was remarkable. It was a small alligator, but it was
a big python. You know what I'm saying. I know you,
I know I know what you know what I'm laid down? Um,
what was I saying though you were saying it bites
they like bite size, so they don't need Yeah, they
don't need to eat that much compared to their size,
(10:55):
and then go a long time without eating because of
those fat stores. Right. Um. And when a long time
like you're you mean a long time like a week
usually in between feedings in the wild, right yeah, but
if if if the s is hitting the fan for
some reason, alligators can shut it down for a year
or two. I know that's like using up a lot
(11:16):
of fat up. But they have some skinny little tails. Yeah,
probably when they're by the end of a year. But
but a week in the wild to One thing I
didn't see though, was exactly how much it takes to
fill them up, like how much percentage of their body
way to the eat, Like is a rabbit enough for
a week or is that like once a day kind
of thing. It's a daily thing, just because I think
(11:38):
they probably try and do a little feeding show every day. Yeah.
So Um. One of the things, um, that a lot
of people might not realize because they're so often associated
with coastal areas, is that alec heres are freshwater. Did
you know that I did? Okay, surely there's somebody out
there who fits the bill with what I just described
there like what like, But they are freshwater. And one
(12:04):
of the things about like Florida's, if there's like a
something larger than an ephemeral puddle, there's probably an alligator
in there. Like they Yes, they'll any body of water.
They will inhabit a pond, a lake, a river, a stream,
a canal, an irrigation ditch, a drainage ditch, whatever. As
long as there's fresh water available, they will um hang
(12:25):
out there. And even when it dries up, they'll they'll
um dig what are called alligator den's that is basically
a burrow back down into the water table, and that
when some of these uh like more ephemeral wetlands kind
of dry up, the alligator den um might be the
only place in the area that has water. And then
(12:47):
when the alligator leaves, they're leaving that water behind, that
water filled hole behind, and then when that dries up,
it provides a burrow for other animals that burrow as well.
So there for and that reason, they're considered a keystone
species in their ecosystem. It's just about to ask are
the keystone. They're so keystone, dude, it's like keystone species. Um,
(13:10):
all right, let's take a little break. I'm all worked
up and I'm all over the place, So I'll refocus
and we'll be back right after this. I want to
learn about a terrosorticel, how to take a proprit with
all about fractal kiscon. That's a little hun the Lizzie
Border murders and they kind of all runs on the
plane every day that we should know. Word up, Jerry Stuck,
(13:34):
Stuck Stuck. I don't know that you know it. Stuck
in this stucks. It's a great name, that's the name
of it. It's a great name. Alright, Stuck st with
with an X. Okay, so I did mention. By the way,
I should just point out since I mentioned Utan's age
of fifty seven years old, born in sixty four. That's
(13:56):
in captivity. I think they can live a long time,
but more like forty years in the wild. Um, so
fifty seven is you know, that's really on the highside.
Utan is doing quite well in captivity. But I imagine
Utanan's towards the in the twilight years. Yeah, I've seen though, Um,
like a couple of I saw a couple of articles
(14:16):
that said, you know, some alligator was captured based on
that and that was estimated to be about a hundred
years old. Um, so I don't think it is necessarily
like just ridiculously unheard of. But I saw in Smithsonian
Zoo I believe they're pretty legit. They said fifty is
usually around the average. I think for a wild alligator,
(14:41):
probably a lot of that is humans cutting that average down.
I would guess, Yeah, we'll talk about poaching in a minute.
That's definitely an issue. Um, should we talk about the
armor plating? Yes? I think we should. This stuff is
cool And what made me kind of think of this
to begin with was watching that dumb show I talked
about before a Loan Beast where they drop you off
(15:03):
and give you a dead animal and no tools. And
in the Buyou they gave people alligators and people had
to figure out how to cut into this alligator without knives.
And you know, they do the same for these for
mammals on other episodes, but the alligator was a particular
challenge because of this armor plating that they have, which
(15:23):
is just really super tough to get into. Yeah. Um,
that's called osteoderms or scoots. I prefer osteoderms, don't you.
I'm a scooter, okay, Um, But that is that's one
reason why it's really hard to kill an alligator especially um,
like as far as hunting alligators goes, um, the state
(15:46):
of Florida in particular really ties your hands with what
you can use um, and it really gives the alligators
like a fighting chance and they literally tie your hands.
They do. They push you into the water, bunch of
gators and say you shouldn't be hunting. Um. So they
literally do have that kind of like the bony plates
underneath their skin, which does make them pretty tough. Um.
(16:09):
But despite being weighed down by what amounts to like
plate mail armor, they're surprisingly fast. And we did this, um,
we did an episode years and years ago. Do you
remember whether whether yeah, in a zigzag pattern And the
answer to that is absolutely not. Don't do that because
the allegory will probably catch you because it's going to
(16:31):
run straight, because it's going to be smarter than you
and that uh in that moment. But um, they can
top out at about like eleven miles an hour on land. Yeah,
and that's you know, if you're just a regular human,
you may be able to run that fast at top
speed for a little while at your sprint. And you know,
alligators are mainly that's there. You know, they don't have
(16:54):
a ton of stamina, but they can't get after you
really fast. And if you've ever seen a video of
them coming out of the water to get something unsuspecting
creature on the shore, uh, you know how fast they
can be. It did crack me up in this article
how they were talking about you know that they don't
have much staminaus because the way their respiration works, and like,
(17:15):
if you need to just all you have to do
is just outrun an alligator for like thirty minutes and
they'll tire out, right, And that's three minutes. Yeah, that
seems like a lot of that's a lot I would
tire out. I know, the alligator just laugh and laugh
as it swam away, like sucker. Five more minutes I
would have been tired out. But you only made it
to twenty five minutes, that's right. So one of the
(17:38):
other things is, uh, we said that they're freshwater, right
and not salty. It's because they lack of salt gland,
which is something things like sharks and shorebirds have their
glands that actually excrete excess salt from the body. Um
alligators don't have that. That's why they prefer fresh water.
But they can hang out in water as long as
it's freshwater. And they have a lot of cool add
(17:59):
up to atians. Remember their reptiles, they're not amphibians. Their
lizards basically that can hang out in the water, which
makes them pretty interesting in and of themselves. One of
the things that they have are um nictitating membranes over
their eyelids, which are just these clear second islands. They
have regular eyelids like we do, but underneath those they
have ones that come over as like a clear film
(18:23):
that cover their eyes so that they can see underwater. Yeah.
It's almost like a contact lens goggle hybrid. Yeah and
yeah and it and it functions exactly as that they
can see really well underwater. And I think they go
back to front instead of just the regular top to
(18:43):
bottom eyelids that they have. That's pretty neat. And the
other cool thing is when they do get underwater, they
can they close up all their holes, all their orifices. Uh,
they have flaps on the ears. Are you laughing at that?
They have flaps that close on their ears and their nostrils. Uh,
they have those inner eyelids already closing, and then they
(19:04):
have a flap called the palateo valve or palatal valve
probably that's what I had in my head, that closes
at the back of the throat, and that's going to
keep water out of the stomachs and the lung the stomach,
like there's more than one, the stomach and the lungs,
and so when they dive, there's no water getting in anywhere,
and they can stay down there for ten or twenty
(19:26):
minutes on a regular dive, or if there is some
weird reason, some threat that they have to stay under
for a couple of hours and just really rest and
chill out, they can do that too. Yeah. And that
palatal valve too means that, um, they can open their
mouths without water getting into their lungs, which means they
can carry their prey underwater. They can bite still and
(19:47):
manipulate things using their mouth underwater without drowning, which is
a big advantage, as we'll see because we're talking now,
Chuck about the alligator diet and here's where it gets gnarly. Yeah,
it's the creepiest style of feeding. I think they are lurkers. Yeah,
they're not hunters, they're not gathers there lurkers. Yeah. There's
(20:09):
sort of like ticks. They wait for something to keep
come close enough for them to get it. Basically, they
stay very still. They just got those little eyeballs over
the water. Maybe they're nostrils if they want to breathe.
When you when you notice one that you hadn't noticed
before and they're so still, yeah, well that's why when
okay pinoki, we heard the growling and I was like,
(20:31):
wtf is going on? Because it's not like you look
up and there's a bunch of alligators having coffee on
top of the water, like you had to look and
I was like, oh my god, they're everywhere. It's very chilling,
like your your fingers going to your mouth, like, oh
my god. Uh. They don't have really sharp teeth though,
I mean those teeth look super scary. Their teeth actually
(20:53):
aren't even very sharp. They look really gnarly in their mouth,
but they're more for crushing, like because they need to
be able to break bone and like break a big
sea turtle shell. Yeah, they've got some really strong jaws.
Their jaws have been shown to be about three to
exert about three thousand, three thousand p s I, which
(21:15):
I think makes them the sixth strongest bite on earth,
and crocodiles have them beat by about eight hundred p
s I. Yeah, crocodiles are number one. They have the
strongest bite. And for reference, if you're not down with
p s I, like you can't, just to me immediately
imagine what you're talking about when you hear three thousand
p s I. Lions and tigers. Adult lions and tigers
(21:38):
typically have bites of around a thousand p s I.
So gators and crocodiles are are mucco macho when it
comes to bite strength. I guess is how you put
it if you were insane. Yeah. At one point in time,
we did an episode on the Worst Ways to Die?
Is there a Worst way to die? About a hundred
years ago, and I don't think this is included, but
(21:59):
I would have to put it on the list because
when an alligator gets ahold of you, it's goal is
to drag you into the water and drown you as
you're getting essentially, you know have the most pounds of
pressure per square inch put down on your body as
your bones and ribs or snack or snacking, they're snapping
(22:20):
your most snackid almost gonna that that's what they do.
They drown you and crush you basically and close that,
you know, close that flap so they're not drowning again.
And then eventually they'll they'll tear you up into bite
sized chunks because they can't, like I said, they can't
um Like I get the feeling when this guy was
(22:41):
feeding it the rabbit that was sort of a max size. Yeah,
they want, like you said, bite size for gator, and
I guess that's about the size of a rabbit. They
want bite sized chunks because they swallow everything whole and
they just digest it to They digest everything they eat,
including bone. Um. But if they happen to catch prey,
and we should say here, like yes, that would be
(23:03):
a terrible way to die. And if you look at
an alligator, you would think they must kill people like
every day. Apparently it's vanishingly rare that somebody like you're
about fifty six times more likely to die of a
hornet wasper beasting um in the United States than you
are of an alligator attack UM, and I think they
(23:24):
get about one person a year UM and unfortunately that
person is usually under age twelve because they basically attack
based on size, they size up prey. It is, so
it's very unlikely that that would happen, but yes, it
would suck terribly. But more likely if you are a
deer or like a wart hog or some other like
(23:47):
larger animal in Florida that might wander too close to
the banks of a um a pond and you're caught
by a gator. UM. That gator is going to take
you and stash you under a log as you were saying,
and is going to just leave you there for a
few days a week maybe and basically let you um
(24:07):
ripen so that you're it's easier to tear bite size
chunks of your rotting flash off from and then they
have to bring you up to the surface to to
toss you into the air and eat you um because
they have to open that palatal valve. Man. There's one
(24:27):
other thing about gators eating, we should say, is that
they use what's called twist feeding, or more commonly known
as the death roll, where they just basically spin on
the axis. I'm not sure if that would be yaw
control or what, but they spin around lengthwise um in
the water and it's weird what they're doing. I thought
(24:49):
it was just for drowning um, but actually what they're
doing is there. Actually it's like a type of um
biomechanical manipulation where they're actually trying to pull you apart
the way of just pulling you apart. And there's this
video of a dude at some like see life UM,
I guess an aquarium or something like that, some demonstration
(25:10):
or show where he's showing how he can stick his
hand in this this gator's mouth, maybe a crocodile, And
of course the alligator crocodile clamps down on his arm
um and catches him really well and immediately starts doing
a death roll, and you can see the way that
guy's arm twists. He had to roll with it. This
(25:30):
guy suddenly rolled like he was hoist gracy and was
grappling all of a sudden with this alligator. But when
he wasn't able to roll as fast, you could see
the direction that his arm was going that the alligator
crocodile is about to just twist it clean off just
from this this um, this twist feeding it was doing.
So it's pretty ingenious, clever way to break something into
(25:51):
bite size chunks. But that's why they do that death
roll is to literally tear you apart so that they
can eat you more efficiently. You gotta do with Steve Winwood.
You gotta with a baby that's right or in access
and be like, never tear us apart. Oh wow, did
you have that planned? No? How could I possibly plan that?
I don't know? Oh man r I P Michael Hutchins.
(26:15):
I know. I thought it was from earlier when I
texted you just get ready for the Steve Winwood joke,
and then I said, I've got my own l well um.
And here's the thing with that, the fresh water like
launching off, the from the water to the shore thing
is that we've all seen the videos of the animals
that are just like, oh, I'd like I have to drink.
(26:36):
It presents a real conundrum for mammals or anything really
on shore. That's like I've got to get some of
that water, like I needed to live. Like you look
around you look around your wart hog uh or or
have Alina, and you're like, I don't see anything. I
don't even see those eyeballs. And you you sneak down
(26:59):
to that shore to two ft in front of them,
there's an alligator. They're waiting, yep. And then that's it
for the Havelina unless he can run away quickly, which
as we've seen, that's possible. Oh, that's Havelna's cold truck.
And I could see that Havevelina is still continuing to
run like a mile after that alligator gave up. Can't
you so chuck? Because they are so um, just vicious
(27:23):
when they're eating, and that they're eating machines, killing machines
in a lot of ways. Like it's it's not really
easy for most humans to sympathize with alligators. They they
got a bad rap for a very long time, and
um people used to kill them especially. I don't know
if we said their range goes from about North Carolina
down to Texas along the southeastern United States. That's where
(27:46):
you're going to find the American alligator. Yeah, and then
in China, not for the American, but they have alligators
in China. Yes, it's the Chinese alligator. It's much smaller.
It goes to about five ft and it is critically endangered.
Now you can only find out on the lower yang Z.
But now American alligators are doing so well that I
saw their starting to show up in Tennessee. Yes, they
(28:07):
now there. They have extended their range to include Tennessee,
which is nuts because it gets cold in Tennessee. Well,
we'll talk about later how they adapted to that. But um,
because they are these killing, vicious machines. Some of the
early um Europeans who lived in the in the southeastern
United States first showed up there. Um they would kill alligators,
(28:29):
mostly as like a matter of course, like you see
an alligator, you don't want anywhere near your cattle or
your livestocks, so you kill the alligator. And that was
about that. It wasn't a huge problem for the alligators
because there were so many alligators, way more than there
are now. Um. But then as more and more people
came along and human civilization encroached further and further onto
alligators land, there were more and more encounters. There were
(28:50):
more and more, um, gruesome discoveries when you called in
the cattle from pasture um, and more and more alligators
started getting killed. But then it was the French. It
was late Francais that really brought about the near extinction
of alligators in America. Strangely enough, that's right because French
designer said, you know what looks fantastic is a handbag
(29:13):
made from alligator or maybe some alligator shoes. And then
all of a sudden, in just a hundred years, uh,
in Florida they killed an estimated ten million alligators, and
by the nineteen fifties, I believe the entire United States
only had about a hundred thousand alligators. Yes, dude, that
is awfully close to expe Yeah, yeah, especially I mean
(29:36):
considering there are five million now. Um. So, Florida outlawed
alligator hunting in nineteen sixty two, then federally five years
later they did the same thing with its classification as
an endangered animal. And uh, in just a few years though,
things they came roaring back, literally, because alligators have a
(29:58):
sort of a unique breeding such wation and that they
recover very quickly because they can lay a lot of eggs.
A female alligator lays about thirty to fifty eggs, buries
them in rotting vegetation, and they're a little a little
bigger than a big chicken egg they're not huge, and
that nest is like sort of like a compost ban
(30:21):
it provides this heat. And this, to me is one
of the facts of the episode is the alligator will
be gendered depending on how hot that pile gets. Yeah,
and it's real specific to like basically, if it's in
the low eighty degrees fahrenheight, it's gonna be girls, right, Yes,
(30:41):
If it's in the higher eighties or low nineties, it's
going to be boys, little boys. And then if it's
in between, it's going to be a mix. Like that's
how that's how close the threshold is. Is Like, if
it's between eight and ninety, like, that's just the smallest
ways in temperature is going to turn one into a
boy and turn one into a girl. Yeah, but if
(31:01):
you're laying thirty to fifty eggs, I don't know about
survival rates, but let's say half of those survive. What's
the number? So it depends are you're talking eggs or juveniles,
because let me just tell you. Let's start with eggs. Eggs.
I don't know. Okay, let's take them. Let's start with
taking them both together. How about that eighty percent of
(31:23):
alligators do not make it to adulthood. That's still a
lot of alligators, that's my point. It is still a lot.
Like if you're talking, I saw some um, some middle
aged females are able to lay up to ninety eggs
in a clutch at once. But so like, that's a lot.
But it makes a lot of sense that something like
(31:43):
eight percent of eggs and juvenile alligators would be killed
because alligators are in addition to being a keystone speacies,
they're also an apex predator, which means that they have
virtually no predators natural predators themselves, like the occasional anaconda python.
Apparently maybe once in a while, like a big panther
will get ahold of one and kill it. But for
(32:05):
the most part, the um, like an alligator, is not
going to be killed by anything other than a human
and adult alligator. So the way that alligator's population is
naturally controlled is by the faithful raccoon UM who comes
along and steals alligator eggs much at its own personal
risk UM, and in doing that and then also eating
(32:28):
like baby alligators after they've hatched hatchlings, UM, the alligator
population is controlled like rather than on the other end,
it's on the it's on the beginning end, which I
find fascinating. Nature is just gosh darn fascinating. I love it. Yeah,
I mean, if you want your mind blown, just look
at the video I saw of a leopard swimming through
(32:51):
a pond two to tackle an alligator on shore from
behind and drag it into the pond. I was like,
wait a minute, like my world has turned upside down,
isn't I thought it was the other way around. I
didn't know these things. I didn't know any cat really
enjoyed swimming. And this thing swam through the water and
stalked on land this alligator from behind and grabbed it
(33:13):
and took it right back in the pond. I was like,
what is what world am I living in? As amazing?
I can't watch that stuff anymore, though I don't mind,
I know what you mean. Like Emily can't and never could.
And I was always like, you know, it's just the
life cyclists, the world's order, it's nature, and she's like,
I know, but I don't care. I don't want to
watch it. And I was like, fair enough, so you can't.
(33:35):
Now you can't watch it? Have I soapboxed about this? Recently?
I don't think so let's hear it. She's like, why,
what's what's the problem? What changed? And I said, I
had to think about it, and I figured it out.
It's not that like what you've just described. I'm generally
okay with. I've read a lot of David Pierce, who's
this awesome philosopher who's on the end of the world,
and he basically says, no, that's suffering still, and we
(33:57):
should we should figure out how did program the biosphere
so that there's no suffering any longer, so that there
isn't that kind of stuff. But if you take all
that aside and you do just kind of subscribe to
the natural order of things, then I'm fine with that.
What I realized I have a problem with is humans
training their cameras onto it and almost like purient interest
(34:19):
of death, of blood, of of the the end of life,
of like viciousness, and that it's like it's that's I
don't like that impulse, and I certainly don't like celebrating
and putting out on display and people not you, but
I mean, like, um, like like the conservationists even who
(34:40):
who who make documentaries like that saying like it's just
life it's just the natural cycle of things. Um, it's like, no,
that's it's it's almost like a form of like like
snuff pornography, but with animals. That's kind of how I've
come to feel about it. That's why I can't watch
it anymore. I don't fault you for I'm just I
just I'm affected by it now and I wasn't before.
(35:01):
I don't know what changed. Yeah, I hear you, I think,
and I'm not defending myself here, but I think like
I watch it through a very sort of scientific eye
and like I definitely know that though there are people
that watch stuff like that where they're like yeah, right, yeah,
(35:22):
whereas I'm never like that. I'm always like, oh man,
that's terrible, Like I feel so bad for those animals,
and like, boy, nature is rough, what I say when
I turned the channel. Probably see it every time. Boy
nature is rough. But I'm never like I always feel
bad and it's always hard to watch. Right. Yeah, I
know I'm with you now. I understand like I said,
like I was saying, I wasn't calling you or anybody
(35:44):
else out. It was more like I had never really
thought about why before, and it was definitely new so
I figured it was worth sharing. It is very much,
and you did talk about that once you can't remember,
But well, then we're gonna edit all this out because
I don't know. No, no, no, no, we're too young
to start having that little of cognitive decline. Do you
know that I couldn't add seven and six this morning?
(36:06):
I was like, I think it's thirteen, and I was
going on with my brain. It was troubling. I guess
let's put a button on the breeding and then we'll
take a break. But um, mommy is going to protect
the nest as best as she can from those raccoons,
and then about forty days later, those little hatchlings are
(36:28):
gonna make a little noise and then mama's going to
dig them out. And then Mama does something unique here,
uh in terms of modern reptiles, and that she's gonna
stick around and protect protect those little ladies and dudes.
Uh if they get into trouble right away for a
little while. And that doesn't really happen with modern reptiles.
It's usually like you're on your own, here's the world.
(36:51):
But Mama alligator is going to protect them for a bit,
which is something that certain dinosaur species did, which people
say like, hey, there you go, and that's why, as
you were saying earlier, like that they had this huge
comeback because of their reproductive strategies. Yeah, even of fifty
eggs as a lot of gators. Yeah, because they get
(37:11):
kind of big. It's like, well, let's take a break
and we'll come back and talk a little more about
I don't know, Chuck, how about alligators sounds good. I
want to learn about a rosortic college, how to take
a perfect but with all about fractal getting kiscone, that's
a little hun the Lizzie Border murders that they kind
of all runs want to play every day that we
(37:31):
should know. No word up, Jerry Stuck, stuck, stuck. I
don't know that you know it stuck and stuck. It's
a great name, that's the name of it. It's a
great name. Alright, stuck within with an X. So, Chuck,
I told you that I saw that article about how
(37:54):
I think it was from the Tennessee Valley Authority basically
saying like, yeah, there's alligators here now and they're here
to stay. You can probably thank climate change for that.
I said that they didn't um I mean it's Tennessee
Valley Authority. UM. But that just enjoy nature and steer
clear of them if you see them. That was the message.
It was like, yes, they're here, now, they're they're not
(38:15):
going anywhere, which I thought was pretty interesting. Um, because
Tennessee can get pretty cold. It snows like just about
every year in Tennessee during the winter. UM. And you
think you know of gators, usually is something that live
in very hot tropical climates, right, yeah, exactly, the reptiles.
They're cold blooded, they need to be warm. Well, they
(38:36):
don't actually hibernate, I don't believe, like not technically. They
will burrow and hang out, but they're not like in
a state of hibernation like you know, we did a
whole episode on that. UM. But when it snows, that
means that the water can freeze, and if they're in
the water, chuck. They actually have a UM strategy for
(38:56):
dealing with these freezing temperatures, because, as everyone knows, if
a pond freezes, it'sund like the fish all die. Underneath
is actually a little warmer under towards the bottom than
it is up top. That's why it doesn't freeze all
the way through solid um and the fish can hang
out there as well. A gator can do the exact
same thing. And I think we should just share with
(39:17):
the world with their strategy is because it's it's outstanding. Yeah,
I think it could be summed up with two words.
And this is probably what they yell out when that
lake starts to freeze to each other. Nostrils out. That's right,
that's kind of it. Yeah, they just think those little
snouts up so they can breathe, and then they just
let the ice form around them and their little snout.
(39:41):
That's it. Have you seen a photo of that. I
didn't look that up for some reason. It's pretty amazing. Yeah,
I mean it's exactly what you think. It looks like
it's a gator snout just barely sticking out of the
ice frozen pond. But they're just sitting there in in
a you know, they're not sitting there like doing their
tax is there anything, Like they're in a very like
(40:03):
slow state of metabolism. But again they're not they're not hibernating,
and when the pond thaws enough, they'll break free and
swim away until the next time there's going to be
a freeze and then they'll say, what nostrils out? That's right. Uh.
I guess The implication though, is that it's better to
(40:23):
be in that frozen lake than on the shore. That's
my that's my understanding. Again. I think maybe the water
temperature is warmer than the air temperature below the ice.
I don't know, I guess because my thing would be like,
it takes a while if it's not like water doesn't
freeze in an instant, So I would be like, why
don't they just get out of the water, But they
(40:44):
must stay in there for a reason. Yeah. This is
in the day after tomorrow, for Pete's sake, man, that
poor Scottish helicopter guy. Goodness so um, so yes, they
can live in Tennessee. Now look out Tennessee. Um. One
of the other things, Chuck, whether we've kind of talked
about is, you know, almost interchangeably talked about crocodiles and alligators,
(41:07):
and they're definitely different. Um. And when you look at them,
if you know what you're looking for, you can very
easily differentiate between an alligator and a crocodile, right, Yeah,
I mean my go to would be to look at
their teeth and if their mouths are shut. You can
see for both of them, you can see those upper
teeth pointing downward, but only for a crocodile can you
(41:31):
see those bottom teeth pointing up right? They have that
toothy grint is how it's put and it really is
an appropriate description it is. They're creepier looking, I think
because of that. But the the actual shape of this
nout is different to the alligators have a wider rounded
U shaped now and the crocodiles there's more long and
pointed and V shaped, And I think alligators have a
(41:54):
wider upper jaw, and then the crocodile have the same
upper and lower jaw. That's why you can see those teeth. Man,
speaking of crocodile teeth, you know that bird that cleans
a crocodile's teeth? Yeah, I think I feel like I
remember that. Apparently that is a science nature myth. Oh,
that's sad. Supposedly there's no genuine photo documentary evidence of
(42:17):
this bird cleaning the crocodile's teeth, and that somehow somewhere
a legend of it grew up because that was like
an example of symbiosis, right, yes, exactly, but it's fake
symbiosis apparently, which is such a bummer. Man, man, I
know we got a bus myths. But yeah, well, well don't.
I don't want to drag anyone down in the Alligator episode.
(42:40):
That's okay, you'll just as usual. Give me the the
blue pill. I always forget which pill it is, Yeah,
blue pill, the blue Pill. You see that new Matrix
document or trailer, No, there's a new one. Uh is it?
Is it like the same everybody? I believe it is
just Lanta Wakowski, not both the Okowskis as far as
(43:02):
the filmmaking goes. But yeah, I mean it's Canu. And
I saw what's her name? Oh what was her name?
I had the biggest crush on her back then carry Moss,
Carrie and Moss. She was great Memento and it looked
like a I don't think it's a d aged Larry Fishburn.
I think it's just a younger actor that they got.
It looks a lot like Neo, not Neo. What was
(43:25):
his name? Jerry? Yeah, Laurence Fisherman's character and the Matrix
is Jerry, just like our Morpheus. Yeah right, And I
think even the lady was the in it. The the oracle. Yeah. Yeah,
I think she's even in it. Oh, yeah, it looks
pretty good. I don't know. I mean, I'll go see it. Yeah, sure,
(43:46):
wouldn't though they burned us with the second third ones.
Oh I don't know about that, did they. I didn't
definitely wouldn't have seen the third, but I think I
saw the second one. They weren't well regarded. Some people
will defend them, but they're generally were not regarded. I see, okay, Uh,
I guess quickly before we go, we should talk a
little bit about the fact that they do have a
(44:07):
hunting program in Florida. Now, after saying you can't kill
them at all, they have introduced a hunting program where
they issue a limited number of hunting permits. I believe
you can only capture a couple of them. Uh, and
their limits is to size and all that stuff. And
I guess this is population control, right, I mean that's
(44:29):
what that's what hunters say usually, and apparently it has
like helps stabilize the population from basically every account I've seen.
I know there was a big outcry because the year
after they took him off of the endangered list is
when they started the hunting program. Um. But from what
I saw, it has kept the population stable. So um.
(44:50):
I mean it's been going on for thirty years. And
I know, like I said, they tie hunters hands in Florida,
not literally you said, no firearms. They you can use
what's called a bang stick UM, which basically delivers one
um usually a forty four caliber charge bullet to the
(45:11):
back of the gader's head. It's basically like a like
a spear with a bullet coming out of the end. Um.
But that's it as far as like firearms go. You
can't use guns or anything like that. You can use
fishing fishing rods. Did you see that. Yeah. I also
saw a video of a guy that was fishing in
(45:32):
a Florida pond and an alligator came up on shore
after him and he ran away like filming it. Well,
this is like people will fish for gators. They make
gator rods and like you know, you can use certain
kind of fishing line and hooks to fish for gators. Um.
You can also use harpoons. You can use crossbows, bows
(45:52):
and arrows. But again these are things. It's like, these
gators are tough and it takes a lot to like
fish for a gator and then fight it for thirty
minutes before you can bring it in. UM. So, you know,
I don't advocate hunting in any form, but you know,
it sounds like Florida's kind of set it up where
there's a um it's it's it's not just like you know,
(46:18):
like you can't shoot, uh exactly. Remember Internet hunting maybe
the most despicable thing of all time. Yet I know,
hats off to you Mack in the day I was
assigned that and I was like, I'm not writing this, um,
but supposedly there are It's not like that by any stretch,
but supposedly a lot of the hunts, like especially if
(46:38):
you're an out of stater coming to Florida to hunt
an alligator, like a guy Ritchie type, um, and you
show up, you very well, maybe hunting a what amounts
to a tame alligator from an alligator farm that has
no fear of humans because it's been fed hand fed
chickens and rabbits its whole life and wants to come
toward you. UM, and that you probably you're going to
(47:00):
be hunting one of those. And it's perfectly legal, although
it's kind of unethical. UM So if you are going
to hunt alligators. Again, I don't advocate it. You really
need to do your your research and your homework and
make sure you're dealing with a legit outfit. Yes, and
because poaching in the black market is still a problem
since you brought it up, you should never feed alligators.
(47:22):
And as a matter of fact, you as a bystander
should feel comfortable yelling at somebody who's feeding an alligator. Yeah,
it's not something you do for sport. I've seen it's terrible,
But I've seen people like drag meet behind their boat
just for fun to like tow an alligator along. Um,
keep your distance, like you said, don't don't walk your
(47:44):
small dogs near ponds or bushes where you can't really
see what's going on in there. And uh, if if
you do get run at they do, say like you
said earlier, to run straight as you can, fast as
you can. And if it happens to get ahold of you,
you got to fight him like a shark. You gotta
hit him, you gotta poke out their eyes, you gotta
(48:04):
punch it in the head, go for the palatal valve.
I've heard plenty of times. Yeah, Like, do whatever you
can because that alligator is going to need to adjust
at some point. It's sort of like when you're playing uh,
tug of war with your dog, right, you act like
you're not paying attention, so the dog readjusts and that's
when he yank it. Yeah, that's how you get the
dog every time. That's also how you escape with your
(48:24):
life from a gator. Dumb dogs. Did you ever see
the video of the guy who was walking his cute
little dog too close to a pond and the gator
got ahold of it. No, no, no, and the guy
jumped in and just calmly, almost expertly, like open pride,
open the gator's mouth to free his dog. And he
was smoking his cigar, had his cigar in his mouth
(48:46):
the whole time while he's doing this like he does
it like it's part of his and his dog's morning routine. Okay,
yeah it was, Okay, it was a little scratched up
and I think probably deeply traumatized. But if it lived
and I don't even know if it like had to
go to the hospital or not, amazing, It is amazing.
There's a lot of videos you can check out on
(49:06):
alligators if you're board. Yeah, there it's pretty fun to watch. Um, yeah,
it is. Uh. If you want to know more about alligators,
then go learn more about alligators. There's plenty to learn.
Just don't get too close. Since I said don't get
too close, it's time for a listener mail. I'm gonna
(49:26):
call this gentle ribbing from Louise. Hey, guys, I was
listening to the episode on I'm Bombing this morning while
I was making my breakfast. When I got to the
part about the body's blood being drained out and going
into a regular water treatment. It made me laugh. How
Josh was so dismayed that they would law blood to
go through the same process as poop and b It
was almost as if he had never menstruted. This is
(49:47):
a very embarrassing email from me. This is at both
of us because I certainly didn't say, well, what about menstruation?
It was far from my mind too. That's very nice
of you to say, but this is really most embarrassing
for me. How will take the bullet with you? While
I occasionally have some background knowledge or at a perspective
on the topic, it is rare that I hear either
(50:08):
of you exclaim and wonder over something I've known about
since I was twelve, just some gentle ribbings, since you
manage to make me feel befriended over the years. Really
enjoy your podcasts and all that I learned through your
lighthearted and conversational tone during these strict shutdowns at the
beginnings of the pandemic. You definitely provided me with a
sense of companionship as I listened to you talk to
(50:28):
each other while also teaching me. I appreciate the diversity
of topics you present in the way you make challenging
concepts approachable without being condescending. Keep up the good work, Louise. Louise,
that was the sweetest uh gentle ribbing we've ever gotten,
so thank you for that. Really pulled it out at
the end there, Louise very much, so thanks a lot. Ah.
(50:48):
You got anything else? I got nothing else? Okay, Well,
if you want to be like Louise and ribb us gently,
we always appreciate that kind of thing. You can wrap
it up in an email and send it off to
do stuff podcasts at iHeart radio dot com. Stuff you
Should Know is a production of I heart Radio. For
more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app.
(51:11):
Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
H
Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of I
Heart Radio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark,
and there's Charles W. Chuck Bryant. Couldn't come up with
a jokey nickname. Jerry's here to everybody. Uh, and this
(00:22):
is stuff you should know the um that's not a
Noith edition. So uh. After researching alligators and looking at
a lot of videos of alligators, you're an expert on alligators,
I'm an expert. No. Um. I had seen plenty of
(00:43):
alligator footage and things, and I never really just sat
and really really watched them for long. And once you
do that, you cannot help. But just think, what era
am I living in here to be watching this weird,
crazy looking dinosaur dragon beast walking along? Okay, Like you
(01:09):
gotta see him walk, like seeing him swimming around, that's great,
But when you see them walking around with their bellies
off the ground, it looks crazy. Yeah, especially if you
have the theme to the Alfred Hitchcock shows playing alongside
of it works really well. They look crazy. It looks
like it doesn't look like something that should be walking
(01:31):
along on today's Earth. Did you know that the theme
from the Alfred Hitchcock show is called The March of
the Marionettes. I didn't know that. It is, all right,
how does it go? Dude? Do do Do Do Do
Do Do Do Do Do Do do good evening, do
do do do do do do do. It's so nice
(01:51):
you can't sing. Have you seen an alligator in real
life in the wild? Uh? Yeah, sure. I talked about
it at one point when I did my Oky Finoki
swamp paddle and we woke up in the morning on
our camping pad that they just have stationed periodically along
the canoe trail. Well, now we know those things must
(02:12):
be at least five ft above the water, right, Well,
I tell you, I don't know if it was or not.
But now that I've read this that they can jump
out of the water that high, I think it's just
not something they often do. But you know, we woke
up surrounded by alligators growling at us or groaning or
whatever they're doing. It's just sort of a are you
(02:36):
sure they were alligators and not crocodiles? I'm almost sure,
and I have a little bit of statistics to back
that up. Um. Even though the Okay finok is not Florida.
I think there are about I'm sorry, yeah, it wouldn't
have been crocodiles. Um about ten if I'm sorry. Five
million American alligators one point to five million in Florida,
(02:59):
whereas Florida only has about a hundred crocodiles. I'm sorry,
a thousand. Cheez, I get this all wrong. One point
two five million alligators in Florida, one thousand crocodiles. And
that's the only place on Earth where crocodiles and alligators
live in the same place. Yeah, down in the Everglades. Yeah,
there's evergladiers just like whatever, man bring it. And it's
not nile crocodiles. There's a specific kind of crocodile called
(03:22):
the American crocodile, just like there's the American alligator. It
just sounds like the the Is that a crocodile or
an alligator? I think it's an all like I think
it's a gaddile. I remember that poster from the eighties.
It said, like, save an alligator, eat a preppy. That's right,
what is your tattoo? Say? Oh? Wait, wrong one. It
(03:44):
clearly has the rounded snout. We'll get to the difference
between them. This is mainly about alligators though, uh as
as these like I just called them almost dinosaurs. Yeah,
you're you're amazed by that. It came through in the
article you put together. Yeah, it's amazing. Or dragons, Like
whenever you see the closeup of a dragon, they have
(04:06):
that same sort of scale male armoring. Chucky realized that
dragons are made up by humans who have probably seen alligators,
right exactly. I think we probably talked about that in
our Dragons episode. Surely we did. So let's let's talk
about gators. Huh. Yeah, we are talking gators and they
like I love among them, Like there's one like just
(04:27):
outside of my condo and the ponds that we have here,
and figured them a lot around here. You just have
to like be on your guard, just knowing when you're
walking a little moment around not alongside bushes you can't
see through and just stuff like that. Don't walk her
around a pond. Um, just have to be a little
extra smart, and they generally tend to leave you alone. Right,
(04:49):
but stick to inner city parking lots exactly. That's the
only place she's put her in the car, drive into
the city, let her out, and put her back him.
So um, like they're fascinating in and of themselves. It
never ceases to amaze me to look at an alligator.
But um, I've had no idea how amazing they actually are.
And one of the things that you put put down
(05:10):
there was that they have intensely small brains, like the
average alligators many feet long ten nine to eleven feet
long probably on average, um often quite longer, but that
their brain is only like eight or nine grahams. And
then this how Stuff Works article, it says that would
take up one half of a tablespoon, So it's a
(05:32):
really small brain. And on the one hand, that means
that like if you had an alligator as a pet,
which is a terrible idea. It's a terrible, terrible idea,
like that alligator is never going to come to love you.
Or two, there's never going to be a point where
you can let your guard down and relax because this
alligator is not going to eat The alligator would eat
(05:52):
you like the first moment it occurred to it to
eat you. Right, Yeah, But they're so they're killing machines
in that sense, they're like mindless killing machines. But at
the same time, there is a lot of anecdotal evidence
that they are way smarter than they should be for
having a brain the size of half of a table spoon.
(06:14):
They can do things like climb chain link fences. Do
you ever see a video of that? Terrifying? They can
climb trees. Um. They have been shown to be able
to figure out how to escape enclosures, like not randomly either,
like looking for ways out, and can actually like manipulate
manipulate vents and stuff like that. And somebody found that
(06:37):
they use tools and that they will put sticks on
their snouts, like they'll gather sticks on their snouts and
um yeah to uh to attract migratory birds who might
be nesting, so that they might come to grab a
stick and then the alligator gets them. It's way smarter
than you would think for something that has a brain
(06:58):
the size of a half of a table spoon. Yeah
the uh. Some of this came from the House stu
Works article I believe written by House of Works founder
Marshall Brain. Oh boy, uh ben a while since I've
read one of those. But he called them instinctual living machines,
which I think is a great band name. But what
he basically means is if an alligator is hungry. It's
(07:21):
gonna eat something, period. Like that's all. It's sort of
like the description of the great white shark and jaws,
Like all it does is swim and eat like an
alligator basically just wants to eat and hang around. Uh.
They are reptiles members of the Crocodilia order, of which
there are twenty three different species, including those crocodiles of
(07:44):
different stripes and sizes and caymans, which we're not really
going to talk about much in here. The poor cayman
never gets any of the it's like, but the Crocodilia
as we know it, and that body for has been
around for more than a hundred and eighty million years, uh,
(08:05):
which you know is you got that big head, you
got that big lizard like body, you got those little
stubby legs. And when they bring that belly off the
ground to walk on them, it looks super greepy. And
they got that big long tail that looks like it
was just made for for whacking things. Yes, and the
tail um keeps getting bigger and bigger and bigger as
(08:26):
the gator grows. Um, and it might not usually I
think tops out at maturity. I think when they reach
sexual maturities about the time they they stopped growing. They
used to think that they alligator would just grow indefinitely
as it aged goldfish. Yeah, but now there's like a
top size for it. They realize. Um, but the tail
(08:47):
might not keep getting longer, but it can keep getting
fatter because that's where the gator stores it's fat. It's
fat reserves. Any excess energy gets stored in its tail,
which is one of the things that makes gator tail
so ridiculously delicious if you're into that kind of thing. Yeah,
and you mentioned, Uh, they can grow on average about
eleven feet as if they're male five to seven hundred pounds.
(09:11):
The ladies are a little shorter. They're about eight feet
long and way about half as much. But um, there
was one that I had looked up. I think it's
still alive. Um, if the Alligator Adventures, Gator Park and
Myrtle Beaches, they're at least not advertising that utan has
passed away. Yeah, he looked like he was still there
based on their website. I think so unless they're just like,
(09:32):
don't tell anyone Utan died, and you know, we're just
trying to get people in the door. They just have
an intern wearing Utan's right. Well, Utan, my friends, was
born in nineteen sixty four, and it's just over eighteen
feet long and weighs two thousand pounds. And if you
want to see something that looks like it, it's c
g I from a movie. Just go look at Utan
(09:54):
and how big this thing is. And watch the people
in the in the cage with Utan feeding at those
skinned rabbits. Wow, I mean they're in there in Utan.
I guess is the deal is, as long as you're
feeding Utan, you can do this show. Uh. And I
guess we should go ahead and tell people that, I mean,
now is a good time to say that they don't
(10:14):
eat that much for as big as they are. It's
very surprising how little an alligator needs to eat to survive. Um.
They I think they feed this thing a rabbit. You know,
it's got to be uh in bite sized chunks. They
can't you know, it's not like a python that can
swallow these eat these big things whole. Although it did
see a video of a python eating an alligator, which
(10:35):
was remarkable. It was a small alligator, but it was
a big python. You know what I'm saying. I know you,
I know I know what you know what I'm laid down? Um,
what was I saying though you were saying it bites
they like bite size, so they don't need Yeah, they
don't need to eat that much compared to their size,
(10:55):
and then go a long time without eating because of
those fat stores. Right. Um. And when a long time
like you're you mean a long time like a week
usually in between feedings in the wild, right yeah, but
if if if the s is hitting the fan for
some reason, alligators can shut it down for a year
or two. I know that's like using up a lot
(11:16):
of fat up. But they have some skinny little tails. Yeah,
probably when they're by the end of a year. But
but a week in the wild to One thing I
didn't see though, was exactly how much it takes to
fill them up, like how much percentage of their body
way to the eat, Like is a rabbit enough for
a week or is that like once a day kind
of thing. It's a daily thing, just because I think
(11:38):
they probably try and do a little feeding show every day. Yeah.
So Um. One of the things, um, that a lot
of people might not realize because they're so often associated
with coastal areas, is that alec heres are freshwater. Did
you know that I did? Okay, surely there's somebody out
there who fits the bill with what I just described
there like what like, But they are freshwater. And one
(12:04):
of the things about like Florida's, if there's like a
something larger than an ephemeral puddle, there's probably an alligator
in there. Like they Yes, they'll any body of water.
They will inhabit a pond, a lake, a river, a stream,
a canal, an irrigation ditch, a drainage ditch, whatever. As
long as there's fresh water available, they will um hang
(12:25):
out there. And even when it dries up, they'll they'll
um dig what are called alligator den's that is basically
a burrow back down into the water table, and that
when some of these uh like more ephemeral wetlands kind
of dry up, the alligator den um might be the
only place in the area that has water. And then
(12:47):
when the alligator leaves, they're leaving that water behind, that
water filled hole behind, and then when that dries up,
it provides a burrow for other animals that burrow as well.
So there for and that reason, they're considered a keystone
species in their ecosystem. It's just about to ask are
the keystone. They're so keystone, dude, it's like keystone species. Um,
(13:10):
all right, let's take a little break. I'm all worked
up and I'm all over the place, So I'll refocus
and we'll be back right after this. I want to
learn about a terrosorticel, how to take a proprit with
all about fractal kiscon. That's a little hun the Lizzie
Border murders and they kind of all runs on the
plane every day that we should know. Word up, Jerry Stuck,
(13:34):
Stuck Stuck. I don't know that you know it. Stuck
in this stucks. It's a great name, that's the name
of it. It's a great name. Alright, Stuck st with
with an X. Okay, so I did mention. By the way,
I should just point out since I mentioned Utan's age
of fifty seven years old, born in sixty four. That's
(13:56):
in captivity. I think they can live a long time,
but more like forty years in the wild. Um, so
fifty seven is you know, that's really on the highside.
Utan is doing quite well in captivity. But I imagine
Utanan's towards the in the twilight years. Yeah, I've seen though, Um,
like a couple of I saw a couple of articles
(14:16):
that said, you know, some alligator was captured based on
that and that was estimated to be about a hundred
years old. Um, so I don't think it is necessarily
like just ridiculously unheard of. But I saw in Smithsonian
Zoo I believe they're pretty legit. They said fifty is
usually around the average. I think for a wild alligator,
(14:41):
probably a lot of that is humans cutting that average down.
I would guess, Yeah, we'll talk about poaching in a minute.
That's definitely an issue. Um, should we talk about the
armor plating? Yes? I think we should. This stuff is
cool And what made me kind of think of this
to begin with was watching that dumb show I talked
about before a Loan Beast where they drop you off
(15:03):
and give you a dead animal and no tools. And
in the Buyou they gave people alligators and people had
to figure out how to cut into this alligator without knives.
And you know, they do the same for these for
mammals on other episodes, but the alligator was a particular
challenge because of this armor plating that they have, which
(15:23):
is just really super tough to get into. Yeah. Um,
that's called osteoderms or scoots. I prefer osteoderms, don't you.
I'm a scooter, okay, Um, But that is that's one
reason why it's really hard to kill an alligator especially um,
like as far as hunting alligators goes, um, the state
(15:46):
of Florida in particular really ties your hands with what
you can use um, and it really gives the alligators
like a fighting chance and they literally tie your hands.
They do. They push you into the water, bunch of
gators and say you shouldn't be hunting. Um. So they
literally do have that kind of like the bony plates
underneath their skin, which does make them pretty tough. Um.
(16:09):
But despite being weighed down by what amounts to like
plate mail armor, they're surprisingly fast. And we did this, um,
we did an episode years and years ago. Do you
remember whether whether yeah, in a zigzag pattern And the
answer to that is absolutely not. Don't do that because
the allegory will probably catch you because it's going to
(16:31):
run straight, because it's going to be smarter than you
and that uh in that moment. But um, they can
top out at about like eleven miles an hour on land. Yeah,
and that's you know, if you're just a regular human,
you may be able to run that fast at top
speed for a little while at your sprint. And you know,
alligators are mainly that's there. You know, they don't have
(16:54):
a ton of stamina, but they can't get after you
really fast. And if you've ever seen a video of
them coming out of the water to get something unsuspecting
creature on the shore, uh, you know how fast they
can be. It did crack me up in this article
how they were talking about you know that they don't
have much staminaus because the way their respiration works, and like,
(17:15):
if you need to just all you have to do
is just outrun an alligator for like thirty minutes and
they'll tire out, right, And that's three minutes. Yeah, that
seems like a lot of that's a lot I would
tire out. I know, the alligator just laugh and laugh
as it swam away, like sucker. Five more minutes I
would have been tired out. But you only made it
to twenty five minutes, that's right. So one of the
(17:38):
other things is, uh, we said that they're freshwater, right
and not salty. It's because they lack of salt gland,
which is something things like sharks and shorebirds have their
glands that actually excrete excess salt from the body. Um
alligators don't have that. That's why they prefer fresh water.
But they can hang out in water as long as
it's freshwater. And they have a lot of cool add
(17:59):
up to atians. Remember their reptiles, they're not amphibians. Their
lizards basically that can hang out in the water, which
makes them pretty interesting in and of themselves. One of
the things that they have are um nictitating membranes over
their eyelids, which are just these clear second islands. They
have regular eyelids like we do, but underneath those they
have ones that come over as like a clear film
(18:23):
that cover their eyes so that they can see underwater. Yeah.
It's almost like a contact lens goggle hybrid. Yeah and
yeah and it and it functions exactly as that they
can see really well underwater. And I think they go
back to front instead of just the regular top to
(18:43):
bottom eyelids that they have. That's pretty neat. And the
other cool thing is when they do get underwater, they
can they close up all their holes, all their orifices. Uh,
they have flaps on the ears. Are you laughing at that?
They have flaps that close on their ears and their nostrils. Uh,
they have those inner eyelids already closing, and then they
(19:04):
have a flap called the palateo valve or palatal valve
probably that's what I had in my head, that closes
at the back of the throat, and that's going to
keep water out of the stomachs and the lung the stomach,
like there's more than one, the stomach and the lungs,
and so when they dive, there's no water getting in anywhere,
and they can stay down there for ten or twenty
(19:26):
minutes on a regular dive, or if there is some
weird reason, some threat that they have to stay under
for a couple of hours and just really rest and
chill out, they can do that too. Yeah. And that
palatal valve too means that, um, they can open their
mouths without water getting into their lungs, which means they
can carry their prey underwater. They can bite still and
(19:47):
manipulate things using their mouth underwater without drowning, which is
a big advantage, as we'll see because we're talking now,
Chuck about the alligator diet and here's where it gets gnarly. Yeah,
it's the creepiest style of feeding. I think they are lurkers. Yeah,
they're not hunters, they're not gathers there lurkers. Yeah. There's
(20:09):
sort of like ticks. They wait for something to keep
come close enough for them to get it. Basically, they
stay very still. They just got those little eyeballs over
the water. Maybe they're nostrils if they want to breathe.
When you when you notice one that you hadn't noticed
before and they're so still, yeah, well that's why when
okay pinoki, we heard the growling and I was like,
(20:31):
wtf is going on? Because it's not like you look
up and there's a bunch of alligators having coffee on
top of the water, like you had to look and
I was like, oh my god, they're everywhere. It's very chilling,
like your your fingers going to your mouth, like, oh
my god. Uh. They don't have really sharp teeth though,
I mean those teeth look super scary. Their teeth actually
(20:53):
aren't even very sharp. They look really gnarly in their mouth,
but they're more for crushing, like because they need to
be able to break bone and like break a big
sea turtle shell. Yeah, they've got some really strong jaws.
Their jaws have been shown to be about three to
exert about three thousand, three thousand p s I, which
(21:15):
I think makes them the sixth strongest bite on earth,
and crocodiles have them beat by about eight hundred p
s I. Yeah, crocodiles are number one. They have the
strongest bite. And for reference, if you're not down with
p s I, like you can't, just to me immediately
imagine what you're talking about when you hear three thousand
p s I. Lions and tigers. Adult lions and tigers
(21:38):
typically have bites of around a thousand p s I.
So gators and crocodiles are are mucco macho when it
comes to bite strength. I guess is how you put
it if you were insane. Yeah. At one point in time,
we did an episode on the Worst Ways to Die?
Is there a Worst way to die? About a hundred
years ago, and I don't think this is included, but
(21:59):
I would have to put it on the list because
when an alligator gets ahold of you, it's goal is
to drag you into the water and drown you as
you're getting essentially, you know have the most pounds of
pressure per square inch put down on your body as
your bones and ribs or snack or snacking, they're snapping
(22:20):
your most snackid almost gonna that that's what they do.
They drown you and crush you basically and close that,
you know, close that flap so they're not drowning again.
And then eventually they'll they'll tear you up into bite
sized chunks because they can't, like I said, they can't
um Like I get the feeling when this guy was
(22:41):
feeding it the rabbit that was sort of a max size. Yeah,
they want, like you said, bite size for gator, and
I guess that's about the size of a rabbit. They
want bite sized chunks because they swallow everything whole and
they just digest it to They digest everything they eat,
including bone. Um. But if they happen to catch prey,
and we should say here, like yes, that would be
(23:03):
a terrible way to die. And if you look at
an alligator, you would think they must kill people like
every day. Apparently it's vanishingly rare that somebody like you're
about fifty six times more likely to die of a
hornet wasper beasting um in the United States than you
are of an alligator attack UM, and I think they
(23:24):
get about one person a year UM and unfortunately that
person is usually under age twelve because they basically attack
based on size, they size up prey. It is, so
it's very unlikely that that would happen, but yes, it
would suck terribly. But more likely if you are a
deer or like a wart hog or some other like
(23:47):
larger animal in Florida that might wander too close to
the banks of a um a pond and you're caught
by a gator. UM. That gator is going to take
you and stash you under a log as you were saying,
and is going to just leave you there for a
few days a week maybe and basically let you um
(24:07):
ripen so that you're it's easier to tear bite size
chunks of your rotting flash off from and then they
have to bring you up to the surface to to
toss you into the air and eat you um because
they have to open that palatal valve. Man. There's one
(24:27):
other thing about gators eating, we should say, is that
they use what's called twist feeding, or more commonly known
as the death roll, where they just basically spin on
the axis. I'm not sure if that would be yaw
control or what, but they spin around lengthwise um in
the water and it's weird what they're doing. I thought
(24:49):
it was just for drowning um, but actually what they're
doing is there. Actually it's like a type of um
biomechanical manipulation where they're actually trying to pull you apart
the way of just pulling you apart. And there's this
video of a dude at some like see life UM,
I guess an aquarium or something like that, some demonstration
(25:10):
or show where he's showing how he can stick his
hand in this this gator's mouth, maybe a crocodile, And
of course the alligator crocodile clamps down on his arm
um and catches him really well and immediately starts doing
a death roll, and you can see the way that
guy's arm twists. He had to roll with it. This
(25:30):
guy suddenly rolled like he was hoist gracy and was
grappling all of a sudden with this alligator. But when
he wasn't able to roll as fast, you could see
the direction that his arm was going that the alligator
crocodile is about to just twist it clean off just
from this this um, this twist feeding it was doing.
So it's pretty ingenious, clever way to break something into
(25:51):
bite size chunks. But that's why they do that death
roll is to literally tear you apart so that they
can eat you more efficiently. You gotta do with Steve Winwood.
You gotta with a baby that's right or in access
and be like, never tear us apart. Oh wow, did
you have that planned? No? How could I possibly plan that?
I don't know? Oh man r I P Michael Hutchins.
(26:15):
I know. I thought it was from earlier when I
texted you just get ready for the Steve Winwood joke,
and then I said, I've got my own l well um.
And here's the thing with that, the fresh water like
launching off, the from the water to the shore thing
is that we've all seen the videos of the animals
that are just like, oh, I'd like I have to drink.
(26:36):
It presents a real conundrum for mammals or anything really
on shore. That's like I've got to get some of
that water, like I needed to live. Like you look
around you look around your wart hog uh or or
have Alina, and you're like, I don't see anything. I
don't even see those eyeballs. And you you sneak down
(26:59):
to that shore to two ft in front of them,
there's an alligator. They're waiting, yep. And then that's it
for the Havelina unless he can run away quickly, which
as we've seen, that's possible. Oh, that's Havelna's cold truck.
And I could see that Havevelina is still continuing to
run like a mile after that alligator gave up. Can't
you so chuck? Because they are so um, just vicious
(27:23):
when they're eating, and that they're eating machines, killing machines
in a lot of ways. Like it's it's not really
easy for most humans to sympathize with alligators. They they
got a bad rap for a very long time, and
um people used to kill them especially. I don't know
if we said their range goes from about North Carolina
down to Texas along the southeastern United States. That's where
(27:46):
you're going to find the American alligator. Yeah, and then
in China, not for the American, but they have alligators
in China. Yes, it's the Chinese alligator. It's much smaller.
It goes to about five ft and it is critically endangered.
Now you can only find out on the lower yang Z.
But now American alligators are doing so well that I
saw their starting to show up in Tennessee. Yes, they
(28:07):
now there. They have extended their range to include Tennessee,
which is nuts because it gets cold in Tennessee. Well,
we'll talk about later how they adapted to that. But um,
because they are these killing, vicious machines. Some of the
early um Europeans who lived in the in the southeastern
United States first showed up there. Um they would kill alligators,
(28:29):
mostly as like a matter of course, like you see
an alligator, you don't want anywhere near your cattle or
your livestocks, so you kill the alligator. And that was
about that. It wasn't a huge problem for the alligators
because there were so many alligators, way more than there
are now. Um. But then as more and more people
came along and human civilization encroached further and further onto
alligators land, there were more and more encounters. There were
(28:50):
more and more, um, gruesome discoveries when you called in
the cattle from pasture um, and more and more alligators
started getting killed. But then it was the French. It
was late Francais that really brought about the near extinction
of alligators in America. Strangely enough, that's right because French
designer said, you know what looks fantastic is a handbag
(29:13):
made from alligator or maybe some alligator shoes. And then
all of a sudden, in just a hundred years, uh,
in Florida they killed an estimated ten million alligators, and
by the nineteen fifties, I believe the entire United States
only had about a hundred thousand alligators. Yes, dude, that
is awfully close to expe Yeah, yeah, especially I mean
(29:36):
considering there are five million now. Um. So, Florida outlawed
alligator hunting in nineteen sixty two, then federally five years
later they did the same thing with its classification as
an endangered animal. And uh, in just a few years though,
things they came roaring back, literally, because alligators have a
(29:58):
sort of a unique breeding such wation and that they
recover very quickly because they can lay a lot of eggs.
A female alligator lays about thirty to fifty eggs, buries
them in rotting vegetation, and they're a little a little
bigger than a big chicken egg they're not huge, and
that nest is like sort of like a compost ban
(30:21):
it provides this heat. And this, to me is one
of the facts of the episode is the alligator will
be gendered depending on how hot that pile gets. Yeah,
and it's real specific to like basically, if it's in
the low eighty degrees fahrenheight, it's gonna be girls, right, Yes,
(30:41):
If it's in the higher eighties or low nineties, it's
going to be boys, little boys. And then if it's
in between, it's going to be a mix. Like that's
how that's how close the threshold is. Is Like, if
it's between eight and ninety, like, that's just the smallest
ways in temperature is going to turn one into a
boy and turn one into a girl. Yeah, but if
(31:01):
you're laying thirty to fifty eggs, I don't know about
survival rates, but let's say half of those survive. What's
the number? So it depends are you're talking eggs or juveniles,
because let me just tell you. Let's start with eggs. Eggs.
I don't know. Okay, let's take them. Let's start with
taking them both together. How about that eighty percent of
(31:23):
alligators do not make it to adulthood. That's still a
lot of alligators, that's my point. It is still a lot.
Like if you're talking, I saw some um, some middle
aged females are able to lay up to ninety eggs
in a clutch at once. But so like, that's a lot.
But it makes a lot of sense that something like
(31:43):
eight percent of eggs and juvenile alligators would be killed
because alligators are in addition to being a keystone speacies,
they're also an apex predator, which means that they have
virtually no predators natural predators themselves, like the occasional anaconda python.
Apparently maybe once in a while, like a big panther
will get ahold of one and kill it. But for
(32:05):
the most part, the um, like an alligator, is not
going to be killed by anything other than a human
and adult alligator. So the way that alligator's population is
naturally controlled is by the faithful raccoon UM who comes
along and steals alligator eggs much at its own personal
risk UM, and in doing that and then also eating
(32:28):
like baby alligators after they've hatched hatchlings, UM, the alligator
population is controlled like rather than on the other end,
it's on the it's on the beginning end, which I
find fascinating. Nature is just gosh darn fascinating. I love it. Yeah,
I mean, if you want your mind blown, just look
at the video I saw of a leopard swimming through
(32:51):
a pond two to tackle an alligator on shore from
behind and drag it into the pond. I was like,
wait a minute, like my world has turned upside down,
isn't I thought it was the other way around. I
didn't know these things. I didn't know any cat really
enjoyed swimming. And this thing swam through the water and
stalked on land this alligator from behind and grabbed it
(33:13):
and took it right back in the pond. I was like,
what is what world am I living in? As amazing?
I can't watch that stuff anymore, though I don't mind,
I know what you mean. Like Emily can't and never could.
And I was always like, you know, it's just the
life cyclists, the world's order, it's nature, and she's like,
I know, but I don't care. I don't want to
watch it. And I was like, fair enough, so you can't.
(33:35):
Now you can't watch it? Have I soapboxed about this? Recently?
I don't think so let's hear it. She's like, why,
what's what's the problem? What changed? And I said, I
had to think about it, and I figured it out.
It's not that like what you've just described. I'm generally
okay with. I've read a lot of David Pierce, who's
this awesome philosopher who's on the end of the world,
and he basically says, no, that's suffering still, and we
(33:57):
should we should figure out how did program the biosphere
so that there's no suffering any longer, so that there
isn't that kind of stuff. But if you take all
that aside and you do just kind of subscribe to
the natural order of things, then I'm fine with that.
What I realized I have a problem with is humans
training their cameras onto it and almost like purient interest
(34:19):
of death, of blood, of of the the end of life,
of like viciousness, and that it's like it's that's I
don't like that impulse, and I certainly don't like celebrating
and putting out on display and people not you, but
I mean, like, um, like like the conservationists even who
(34:40):
who who make documentaries like that saying like it's just
life it's just the natural cycle of things. Um, it's like, no,
that's it's it's almost like a form of like like
snuff pornography, but with animals. That's kind of how I've
come to feel about it. That's why I can't watch
it anymore. I don't fault you for I'm just I
just I'm affected by it now and I wasn't before.
(35:01):
I don't know what changed. Yeah, I hear you, I think,
and I'm not defending myself here, but I think like
I watch it through a very sort of scientific eye
and like I definitely know that though there are people
that watch stuff like that where they're like yeah, right, yeah,
(35:22):
whereas I'm never like that. I'm always like, oh man,
that's terrible, Like I feel so bad for those animals,
and like, boy, nature is rough, what I say when
I turned the channel. Probably see it every time. Boy
nature is rough. But I'm never like I always feel
bad and it's always hard to watch. Right. Yeah, I
know I'm with you now. I understand like I said,
like I was saying, I wasn't calling you or anybody
(35:44):
else out. It was more like I had never really
thought about why before, and it was definitely new so
I figured it was worth sharing. It is very much,
and you did talk about that once you can't remember,
But well, then we're gonna edit all this out because
I don't know. No, no, no, no, we're too young
to start having that little of cognitive decline. Do you
know that I couldn't add seven and six this morning?
(36:06):
I was like, I think it's thirteen, and I was
going on with my brain. It was troubling. I guess
let's put a button on the breeding and then we'll
take a break. But um, mommy is going to protect
the nest as best as she can from those raccoons,
and then about forty days later, those little hatchlings are
(36:28):
gonna make a little noise and then mama's going to
dig them out. And then Mama does something unique here,
uh in terms of modern reptiles, and that she's gonna
stick around and protect protect those little ladies and dudes.
Uh if they get into trouble right away for a
little while. And that doesn't really happen with modern reptiles.
It's usually like you're on your own, here's the world.
(36:51):
But Mama alligator is going to protect them for a bit,
which is something that certain dinosaur species did, which people
say like, hey, there you go, and that's why, as
you were saying earlier, like that they had this huge
comeback because of their reproductive strategies. Yeah, even of fifty
eggs as a lot of gators. Yeah, because they get
(37:11):
kind of big. It's like, well, let's take a break
and we'll come back and talk a little more about
I don't know, Chuck, how about alligators sounds good. I
want to learn about a rosortic college, how to take
a perfect but with all about fractal getting kiscone, that's
a little hun the Lizzie Border murders that they kind
of all runs want to play every day that we
(37:31):
should know. No word up, Jerry Stuck, stuck, stuck. I
don't know that you know it stuck and stuck. It's
a great name, that's the name of it. It's a
great name. Alright, stuck within with an X. So, Chuck,
I told you that I saw that article about how
(37:54):
I think it was from the Tennessee Valley Authority basically
saying like, yeah, there's alligators here now and they're here
to stay. You can probably thank climate change for that.
I said that they didn't um I mean it's Tennessee
Valley Authority. UM. But that just enjoy nature and steer
clear of them if you see them. That was the message.
It was like, yes, they're here, now, they're they're not
(38:15):
going anywhere, which I thought was pretty interesting. Um, because
Tennessee can get pretty cold. It snows like just about
every year in Tennessee during the winter. UM. And you
think you know of gators, usually is something that live
in very hot tropical climates, right, yeah, exactly, the reptiles.
They're cold blooded, they need to be warm. Well, they
(38:36):
don't actually hibernate, I don't believe, like not technically. They
will burrow and hang out, but they're not like in
a state of hibernation like you know, we did a
whole episode on that. UM. But when it snows, that
means that the water can freeze, and if they're in
the water, chuck. They actually have a UM strategy for
(38:56):
dealing with these freezing temperatures, because, as everyone knows, if
a pond freezes, it'sund like the fish all die. Underneath
is actually a little warmer under towards the bottom than
it is up top. That's why it doesn't freeze all
the way through solid um and the fish can hang
out there as well. A gator can do the exact
same thing. And I think we should just share with
(39:17):
the world with their strategy is because it's it's outstanding. Yeah,
I think it could be summed up with two words.
And this is probably what they yell out when that
lake starts to freeze to each other. Nostrils out. That's right,
that's kind of it. Yeah, they just think those little
snouts up so they can breathe, and then they just
let the ice form around them and their little snout.
(39:41):
That's it. Have you seen a photo of that. I
didn't look that up for some reason. It's pretty amazing. Yeah,
I mean it's exactly what you think. It looks like
it's a gator snout just barely sticking out of the
ice frozen pond. But they're just sitting there in in
a you know, they're not sitting there like doing their
tax is there anything, Like they're in a very like
(40:03):
slow state of metabolism. But again they're not they're not hibernating,
and when the pond thaws enough, they'll break free and
swim away until the next time there's going to be
a freeze and then they'll say, what nostrils out? That's right. Uh.
I guess The implication though, is that it's better to
(40:23):
be in that frozen lake than on the shore. That's
my that's my understanding. Again. I think maybe the water
temperature is warmer than the air temperature below the ice.
I don't know, I guess because my thing would be like,
it takes a while if it's not like water doesn't
freeze in an instant, So I would be like, why
don't they just get out of the water, But they
(40:44):
must stay in there for a reason. Yeah. This is
in the day after tomorrow, for Pete's sake, man, that
poor Scottish helicopter guy. Goodness so um, so yes, they
can live in Tennessee. Now look out Tennessee. Um. One
of the other things, Chuck, whether we've kind of talked
about is, you know, almost interchangeably talked about crocodiles and alligators,
(41:07):
and they're definitely different. Um. And when you look at them,
if you know what you're looking for, you can very
easily differentiate between an alligator and a crocodile, right, Yeah,
I mean my go to would be to look at
their teeth and if their mouths are shut. You can
see for both of them, you can see those upper
teeth pointing downward, but only for a crocodile can you
(41:31):
see those bottom teeth pointing up right? They have that
toothy grint is how it's put and it really is
an appropriate description it is. They're creepier looking, I think
because of that. But the the actual shape of this
nout is different to the alligators have a wider rounded
U shaped now and the crocodiles there's more long and
pointed and V shaped, And I think alligators have a
(41:54):
wider upper jaw, and then the crocodile have the same
upper and lower jaw. That's why you can see those teeth. Man,
speaking of crocodile teeth, you know that bird that cleans
a crocodile's teeth? Yeah, I think I feel like I
remember that. Apparently that is a science nature myth. Oh,
that's sad. Supposedly there's no genuine photo documentary evidence of
(42:17):
this bird cleaning the crocodile's teeth, and that somehow somewhere
a legend of it grew up because that was like
an example of symbiosis, right, yes, exactly, but it's fake
symbiosis apparently, which is such a bummer. Man, man, I
know we got a bus myths. But yeah, well, well don't.
I don't want to drag anyone down in the Alligator episode.
(42:40):
That's okay, you'll just as usual. Give me the the
blue pill. I always forget which pill it is, Yeah,
blue pill, the blue Pill. You see that new Matrix
document or trailer, No, there's a new one. Uh is it?
Is it like the same everybody? I believe it is
just Lanta Wakowski, not both the Okowskis as far as
(43:02):
the filmmaking goes. But yeah, I mean it's Canu. And
I saw what's her name? Oh what was her name?
I had the biggest crush on her back then carry Moss,
Carrie and Moss. She was great Memento and it looked
like a I don't think it's a d aged Larry Fishburn.
I think it's just a younger actor that they got.
It looks a lot like Neo, not Neo. What was
(43:25):
his name? Jerry? Yeah, Laurence Fisherman's character and the Matrix
is Jerry, just like our Morpheus. Yeah right, And I
think even the lady was the in it. The the oracle. Yeah. Yeah,
I think she's even in it. Oh, yeah, it looks
pretty good. I don't know. I mean, I'll go see it. Yeah, sure,
(43:46):
wouldn't though they burned us with the second third ones.
Oh I don't know about that, did they. I didn't
definitely wouldn't have seen the third, but I think I
saw the second one. They weren't well regarded. Some people
will defend them, but they're generally were not regarded. I see, okay, Uh,
I guess quickly before we go, we should talk a
little bit about the fact that they do have a
(44:07):
hunting program in Florida. Now, after saying you can't kill
them at all, they have introduced a hunting program where
they issue a limited number of hunting permits. I believe
you can only capture a couple of them. Uh, and
their limits is to size and all that stuff. And
I guess this is population control, right, I mean that's
(44:29):
what that's what hunters say usually, and apparently it has
like helps stabilize the population from basically every account I've seen.
I know there was a big outcry because the year
after they took him off of the endangered list is
when they started the hunting program. Um. But from what
I saw, it has kept the population stable. So um.
(44:50):
I mean it's been going on for thirty years. And
I know, like I said, they tie hunters hands in Florida,
not literally you said, no firearms. They you can use
what's called a bang stick UM, which basically delivers one
um usually a forty four caliber charge bullet to the
(45:11):
back of the gader's head. It's basically like a like
a spear with a bullet coming out of the end. Um.
But that's it as far as like firearms go. You
can't use guns or anything like that. You can use
fishing fishing rods. Did you see that. Yeah. I also
saw a video of a guy that was fishing in
(45:32):
a Florida pond and an alligator came up on shore
after him and he ran away like filming it. Well,
this is like people will fish for gators. They make
gator rods and like you know, you can use certain
kind of fishing line and hooks to fish for gators. Um.
You can also use harpoons. You can use crossbows, bows
(45:52):
and arrows. But again these are things. It's like, these
gators are tough and it takes a lot to like
fish for a gator and then fight it for thirty
minutes before you can bring it in. UM. So, you know,
I don't advocate hunting in any form, but you know,
it sounds like Florida's kind of set it up where
there's a um it's it's it's not just like you know,
(46:18):
like you can't shoot, uh exactly. Remember Internet hunting maybe
the most despicable thing of all time. Yet I know,
hats off to you Mack in the day I was
assigned that and I was like, I'm not writing this, um,
but supposedly there are It's not like that by any stretch,
but supposedly a lot of the hunts, like especially if
(46:38):
you're an out of stater coming to Florida to hunt
an alligator, like a guy Ritchie type, um, and you
show up, you very well, maybe hunting a what amounts
to a tame alligator from an alligator farm that has
no fear of humans because it's been fed hand fed
chickens and rabbits its whole life and wants to come
toward you. UM, and that you probably you're going to
(47:00):
be hunting one of those. And it's perfectly legal, although
it's kind of unethical. UM So if you are going
to hunt alligators. Again, I don't advocate it. You really
need to do your your research and your homework and
make sure you're dealing with a legit outfit. Yes, and
because poaching in the black market is still a problem
since you brought it up, you should never feed alligators.
(47:22):
And as a matter of fact, you as a bystander
should feel comfortable yelling at somebody who's feeding an alligator. Yeah,
it's not something you do for sport. I've seen it's terrible,
But I've seen people like drag meet behind their boat
just for fun to like tow an alligator along. Um,
keep your distance, like you said, don't don't walk your
(47:44):
small dogs near ponds or bushes where you can't really
see what's going on in there. And uh, if if
you do get run at they do, say like you
said earlier, to run straight as you can, fast as
you can. And if it happens to get ahold of you,
you got to fight him like a shark. You gotta
hit him, you gotta poke out their eyes, you gotta
(48:04):
punch it in the head, go for the palatal valve.
I've heard plenty of times. Yeah, Like, do whatever you
can because that alligator is going to need to adjust
at some point. It's sort of like when you're playing uh,
tug of war with your dog, right, you act like
you're not paying attention, so the dog readjusts and that's
when he yank it. Yeah, that's how you get the
dog every time. That's also how you escape with your
(48:24):
life from a gator. Dumb dogs. Did you ever see
the video of the guy who was walking his cute
little dog too close to a pond and the gator
got ahold of it. No, no, no, and the guy
jumped in and just calmly, almost expertly, like open pride,
open the gator's mouth to free his dog. And he
was smoking his cigar, had his cigar in his mouth
(48:46):
the whole time while he's doing this like he does
it like it's part of his and his dog's morning routine. Okay,
yeah it was, Okay, it was a little scratched up
and I think probably deeply traumatized. But if it lived
and I don't even know if it like had to
go to the hospital or not, amazing, It is amazing.
There's a lot of videos you can check out on
(49:06):
alligators if you're board. Yeah, there it's pretty fun to watch. Um, yeah,
it is. Uh. If you want to know more about alligators,
then go learn more about alligators. There's plenty to learn.
Just don't get too close. Since I said don't get
too close, it's time for a listener mail. I'm gonna
(49:26):
call this gentle ribbing from Louise. Hey, guys, I was
listening to the episode on I'm Bombing this morning while
I was making my breakfast. When I got to the
part about the body's blood being drained out and going
into a regular water treatment. It made me laugh. How
Josh was so dismayed that they would law blood to
go through the same process as poop and b It
was almost as if he had never menstruted. This is
(49:47):
a very embarrassing email from me. This is at both
of us because I certainly didn't say, well, what about menstruation?
It was far from my mind too. That's very nice
of you to say, but this is really most embarrassing
for me. How will take the bullet with you? While
I occasionally have some background knowledge or at a perspective
on the topic, it is rare that I hear either
(50:08):
of you exclaim and wonder over something I've known about
since I was twelve, just some gentle ribbings, since you
manage to make me feel befriended over the years. Really
enjoy your podcasts and all that I learned through your
lighthearted and conversational tone during these strict shutdowns at the
beginnings of the pandemic. You definitely provided me with a
sense of companionship as I listened to you talk to
(50:28):
each other while also teaching me. I appreciate the diversity
of topics you present in the way you make challenging
concepts approachable without being condescending. Keep up the good work, Louise. Louise,
that was the sweetest uh gentle ribbing we've ever gotten,
so thank you for that. Really pulled it out at
the end there, Louise very much, so thanks a lot. Ah.
(50:48):
You got anything else? I got nothing else? Okay, Well,
if you want to be like Louise and ribb us gently,
we always appreciate that kind of thing. You can wrap
it up in an email and send it off to
do stuff podcasts at iHeart radio dot com. Stuff you
Should Know is a production of I heart Radio. For
more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app.
(51:11):
Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
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