Alligators are more common than you may think.In a marsh near coastal Texas, a young alligator recently met a grisly end—as a meal for another, much bigger alligator. As the у eаt glped dow its рeу, the photographer аррeed to be nearby and сарted the alligator сааm.The smaller alligator was a mouthful for the larger reptile, but the big gator gished and chomped, and the smaller gator’s body and legs eventually dragged down the big reptile’s throat.
In the final photo, only the tail of the little alligator is still visible, dangling from the well-satiated bigger gator’s jaws.
Photographer Brad Streets discovered the cascade at Brazos Bend State Park in Needville, Texas, after being drawn to a floating pile of guts in the water near a large alligator known as a stallmouth.
But a few hours later, he got a closer look at the gator and noticed that it had a much smaller alligator in its mouth, Streets said. Small meals can be gulped down whole, but bigger meals take a little more work.
According to Texas Parks and Wildlife (TPW), merica alligators (Alligator mississippiesis) are common in Texas and along the Gulf of Mexico, where they live in coastal marshes and river systems.An estimated 250 alligators measuring at least 6 feet (1.8 meters) long inhabit Brazos Bend State Park, and some are as long as 16 feet (4.9 meters), TPW representatives said of the park’s weather.
Alligators living in the park may be found anywhere there is water, even “in some places where there isn’t water,” according to TPW. Gators aren’t picky eaters and will eat anything they find or hear in the water, including rocks, shotgun shells, and beer cans, according to the TPW.
Scientists reported that some American alligators suckle on duck in a regularly published article in the September 2017 issue of the Journal of Natural History; researchers have even observed crocodilians eating fish.Alligators typically eat fish, turtles, snakes, birds, and mammals such as rabbits, hogs, raccoons, and deer, as well as other alligators.
In fact, alligator crawfish is not edible, according to James Nifog, a research biologist at the US Marine Corps Environmental Research and Development Center’s Wetlands and Coastal Ecology Branch.
“The larger males, they’re opportunistic.” “They see a smaller alligator—it’s a nice snack for them,” Nifog said. “It usually occurs with larger adult males who have established a territory.””When sbordiate males come alog, they ft — ad the winner eats the loser.”Bottoms υp! Only the smaller gator’s tail was visible in the big gator’s maw, according to the ed.
Small рeу is gulped down whole, but cooking larger animals takes time, and alligators use their powerful jaws to crush bones and shred bigger meals into more manageable, bite-size pieces, Joatha Warer, an alligator program leader for TPW, told Live Science. “They’ll do a ‘deаt spliff,’ spill the water, then use their gnasher teeth and jaws to rip off chunks of meat and swallow it in pieces,” Warrier explained.
For a really big meal, an alligator might stash its prize in a ditch or burrow at the water’s edge to let it “soften up” so that it’s easier to tear apart, and then come back and finish it off later, Warrier added. “It depends on the size of the pool, the temperature of the water, and their sizes,” he explained.
A meal the size of a young alligator, as shown in the photos, would take the big gator a couple of weeks to digest, Nifog told Live Science. But that doesn’t mean the alligator won’t take advantage of the opportunistic bounty provided by its watery ecosystem, he adds.
