The first swamp tour I took in Louisiana was modeled on the Disneyland "Jungle Cruise" ride: very professional, lots of wisecracks, and a route planned down to the inch. First stop: alligators, since everyone wants to see alligators. So it was alligators we saw.
I don't personally care all that much about alligators, but I did finally get the straight dope about why the guides feed them. It turns out that alligators are afraid of humans. You could dive into gator infested waters and they'd all just swim away from you. So the treats are the only way to get them to hang around for the tourists. It has nothing to do with giving them a lazier alternative to human flesh, as I had vaguely assumed.
I guess it's a good thing we have gators in the USA instead of crocs.
Yeah, about that...
https://nas.er.usgs.gov/queries/factsheet.aspx?SpeciesID=222
Much crankier than alligators, and in the US.
we do have crocs (the animal, not the shoe) in extreme southern florida and they are native. a few years ago, i went camping in dry tortugas national park, about 75 miles west of key west, where there is a resident croc. they tend to be shy critters and other than a mention by the park ranger during orientation, we wouldn't have even known he was there.
Alligators are super cool. Feeding them is terrible. You want gators to be scared of humans. Feeding them makes them a lot more likely to attack people or pets. Shame on those guides.
Another cool fact about gators. The rule of thumb down here in FLA is, if you look at some little pond or drainage area and wonder to yourself if any alligators live there, the answer is, almost universally, yes they do.
+2 for that comment.
1 for each paragraph!
I’ve become rabidly anti feeding wild animals. Even birds.
And I’m starting to think not securing your garden is irresponsible.
I had a woodchuck move under my neighbors deck. A woodchuck who came to our backyards to eat my tomatoes.
Thus I think not securing my garden is not being a good neighbor.
By the way. I learned it all in bear country. If you don’t want bears around secure the food. This includes trash cans and town dumps.
And it works.
I'm with you. I haven't put out bird feeders for years because a) I felt I could not keep the feeders as clean as I should to prevent disease, and b) I sometimes saw birds injured by flying into my windows or being killed by neighborhood cats. Nothing wrong with attracting wildlife to your yard the natural way by providing good habitat, water sources, and plants that produce food though. We do that in spades.
i have no idea what the law is in louisiana, but it's illegal has hell to feed a gator in florida. we have a saying: a fed gator is a dead gator, because gators don't differentiate between the food provider and the food itself. they'll see humans as food. one quick story about the florida guide who tried to show off with a gator for his tourists. the gator bit his hand off, and when officials got him back to camp, they cuffed him, missing hand and all, before they hauled him off presumably to a hospital and then to jail.
Do they think we taste like chicken?
Good to know that gator thoughts about me and my thoughts about them are perfectly symmetrical.