Alligators and Crocodiles Use Tools to Hunt, in a First

[xchrom]

http://www.livescience.com/41898-alligators-crocodiles-use-tools.html

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A well-camouflaged mugger crocodile displays sticks to lure prey, in India.
Credit: Vladimir Dinets et al / Ethology Ecology and Evolution


It's official: Reptiles can use tools to help them hunt.

New research shows that alligators and crocodiles can use small sticks to attract birds looking for nesting materials. If the birds get too close, they become a meal. The behavior has so far been observed among American alligators in Louisiana, as well as mugger crocodiles (also known as marsh crocodiles) in India.

Alligators only engaged in this trickery during the nesting season and in areas where birds nested, said Vladimir Dinets, a behavioral ecologist at the University of Tennessee Knoxville. During nesting season, there's often a shortage of sticks in marshy areas where these reptiles and birds overlap, and birds sometimes even fight amongst themselves to procure sticks to build nests. The study, which Dinets co-authored and which was published in late November in the journal Ethology Ecology & Evolution, suggests that there is no other explanation for this behavior than as one of tool use.

"What's really remarkable — they are not only using lures, but they are timing it to just when the birds they want to capture are nesting and looking for sticks to use," said Gordon Burghardt, an ethologist (animal behaviorist) and comparative psychologist specializing in reptiles at UT-Knoxville. "They are making some assessment of the birds themselves."

An American alligator successfully lures a snowy egret with a stick, and then eats it, at St. Augustine Alligator Farm Zoological Park in Florida.
Credit: Don SpechtView full size image

[djean111]

1. Have they always done this, or is this evolution?

Having been thoroughly impressed with the awareness of a very large salt water crocodile in an enclosure in a small aquarium on Sydney Harbor, the prospect of these reptiles getting even more cunning is scary!

Even though said enclosure was made of very thick Plexiglas, that croc was on his feet, alert, and constantly shifted position so he was facing me wherever I stood - even when I went up the steps to look down on him (very tall enclosure).

It was almost like he was thinking yeah, I know there is a barrier, but if it was to break, you are lunch.........his attitude was totally unlike those alligators at Busch Gardens who, as the great Dave Barry said, look barely awake, as if they had been up all night playing cards, drinking beer, and eating buckets of KFC. (I may have embroidered that a bit!).

So crocs with tools. Yikes. Although I suppose they could only lure tourists with bottles of Hop Hog IPA.

[MisterP]

2. what's next, budgies with bounce bombs?

[xchrom]

3. !