Alligators pg 6i --On Land 9

ALLIGATOR BEHAVIOR page 6i: ON LAND; WALKING AND BASKING 9
This page was born 10/18/2022. Rickubis designed it. (such as it is.) Last update: 05/12/2023
Images and contents on this page copyright ©2001-2023 Richard M. Dashnau

Alligators are amphibious (but not AMPHIBIANS) and are in the water most of the time. Therefore it is worthy of note when they are on land, especially
when they are doing more than just absorbing solar energy. Here is yet another page of terrestrial alligator antics.

From Brazos Bend State Park on 08/28/2022 Some hours after the action with the gator mom on Spillway Trail (described elsewhere), this alligator was foraging
near the Observation Tower in water that had reappeared in Pilant Lake. Although a few small fish and occasional tadpoles were visible, there was a lot less activity in the water than usual.
The alligator had mud all over the top of its head, a really big lump of mud on the back of its head. A small dragonfly used the mud as a perch while the gator slowly cruised around. The gator
submerged briefly, then moved East, and towards the common crossing spot (I saw many gators leave the lake at that point-a few yards East of the restored culvert-over the last month or so.).
Since it appeared that the hunting was poor, I thought there was a good chance that this one would cross too, so I moved a bit past that point (to get the sun behind me) and turned to watch.
A few minutes later, a group of 8 visitors walked up, and I got their attention and suggested that they watch the area near me. The gator crossed, to the evident enjoyment of the group. The
people kept far back from the crossing gator. After the gator had crossed, I was able to talk to the folks, who were mostly new visitors to the park (two were visiting from Northern U.S.).
Sharing experiences like this with park visitors-especially those new to the park-is one of the biggest rewards for working at BBSP,
When I've seen an alligator's head covered with mud like this, it was pretty obvious that the alligator had been burrowing (because I had seen it using the burrow). With so much mud on
top of its head, I think that this alligator had been burrowing or moving in and out of a burrow( or den); or, the alligator had buried itself in the soft mud.

Update 05/12/2023 - I'm going back to 08/14/2022 for this update. Why? I have a lot of material captured that I haven't used yet. I'm always getting more, and some is very
interesting (at least to me). But gathering material for 20+ years has shown me an interesting perspective for that material--time. Without meaning to (at first), I've been
able to show various changes over time...20 years! The dry weather we experienced in 2022 caused some radical changes in the area, especially at Brazos Bend State
Park. I was able to witness-and record-how some of the life in BBSP was affected; especially the alligators. So, this update wasn't as much "fun" as some others
I've done, but is a quick record of conditions at the park that day, and how another alligator was dealing with them. I've shared some of the other changes at BBSP
over the years here in my domain Looking at some of them now, I wish I'd captured and/or shared a bit more detail. So...this update.
08/14/2022 From lack of rain, water had been evaporating from BBSP since March. But a little rain fell in August. This alligator was moving East, out of Pilant Lake.
About a month before, alligators had worn a trench in the mud along the same route, but it became hidden by the growing plants, and smoothed by the recent short rains.


The alligator got to the puddle next to the Spillway Bridge, which wasn't very deep. A closer look at the images (and at the video clip here) will show a groove that
the alligator made in the really soft mud visible behind it. I thought it might stay and rest, or even try to hunt, but I suspected nothing would be found in a puddle that
was a few weeks old, though there were tiny creatures moving there.


The alligator stopped in the water near the bridge. But it didn't stay long, and walked through the puddle and back onto the mud. It rested there while it looked around.
It seemed to be deciding what to do. Then it started walking again. It walked across mud that had become firmer during the drier period, and then covered with fresh
greenery from the recent brief rain. Impressions in the mud might be tracks from other travelers. The alligator kept going, apparently moving towards Elm Lake (still
about 1/4 mile away). I left it when it rested in another dry spot, hidden by plants. Here's the link to the video clip again.

From Brazos Bend State Park on 07/10/2022 Over the 20 years I've been interpreting at BBSP, one of the Top Five questions asked is "How fast can an alligator move?" I've read
they can move quickly. For years I've tried to capture video showing how fast an alligator can move when it wants to. Since most gators are relatively immobile, or moving at a leisurely pace--but can burst
into very quck movement without notice-I haven't had any luck. Shooting hours of footage of alligators not going fast, just on the chance that I might catch one bursting into action wasn't an option. I've seen
them move fast, but hadn't had any luck recording it. Until...July 2022.
I'm going back a few months for this update--to a time just before Pilant Lake became dry, 7/10/2022 . Pilant Lake is still dry now (10/06/22). I was on the North side of 40-Acre Lake going West. The water
in Pilant Lake was low, receding more every week due to evaporation. An alligator-which I estimate to be about 4' long-crawled out of Pilant Lake onto the trail. I've always loved watching alligators cross
the trail, and I started recording this one. As they often do, this alligator laid down at the edge of the trail. Meanwhile, I interpreted for the vistors nearby. Because of the situation, and the body position of the
alligator, I expected it to get up and walk across into 40-Acre Lake at any minute. But, I was wrong.
The alligator didn't walk across. It RAN across the trail.

animated GIF at normal speed       animated GIF at slowed down       Pilant Lake 07/10/2022              Egret, Stilts, Spoonbill, Heron 07/10/2022

This was a very uncommon sight, at least for *me*. To put this into perspective; I've been volunteering at BBSP since 2001. I've spent most of my time at this park out on the trails, and usually in my favorite
ecology--the wetlands and lakes. I've seen *many* alligators crossing trails, and moving on land. A quick count through my archived imagery yielded at least 150 separate occasions of alligators moving on land
that I've recorded in photos or video. There are many others that I seen but have not photographed. I've gathered a few examples without context on this walking gator page.
Out of all those experiences I can only recall a few where the alligator was not high-walking at the usual stately pace. Today was the only time that I can recall ever seeing an alligator run across a trail. By the way,
I have seen alligators do a "fright dive" when scared off of a basking spot. I don't count those, since they don't cover much ground (rarely more than the length of the alligator doing the dive) and therefore only
involve a few steps. I was impressed by the film footage (about 10 seconds), so I spend way too much time editing the footage, slowing it down, etc. That, and the other crossing described below are together in this
video clip showing 2 alligator crossings.
Around that time, discussions about crocodilian movement over land had appeared in various media I follow. I saw a video clip showing a bounding Cuban Crocodile (Crocodylus rhombifer) that was making the rounds.
Holy cow! Those things can MOVE! If you can, do an online search for those clips. If you see any, imagine one of our alligators moving that quickly towards you. I couldn't even begin to react in such a situation. Further
investigation didn't give me any more context to why they move that way (Do they ambush prey on land that way? Is it only an escape behavior?) I'd seen "galloping" mentioned in the literature I've read about
crocodilians--but only briefly described as an alternative to "high-walking" as a mode of moving over land. (They can also "sprawl-walk" and "belly slide" as other alternatives").
This study, released in 2019, compares many different species of crocodilians and seeks to discover how often "galloping" (or "bounding") occurs: "Divergent evolution of terrestrial locomotor abilities in extant Crocodylia"
by John R. Hutchinson, Dean Felkler, Kati Houston, Yu-Mei Chang, John Brueggen, David Kledzik & Kent A. Vliet
There's a summary of the study here: https://www.theguardian.com/science/2019/dec/17/see-you-later-trotting-alligators-many-crocodiles-can-gallop
What I take from this study as relevant here, is that: 1) most crocodilians can gallop, and can move fast when they do.
2)This behavior becomes limited as the animal gets larger. 3)most "alligatoroids" do NOT gallop. Paleosuchus palpebrosus(Cuvier's caiman),Caiman crocodilus(spectacled caiman),Caiman latirostris(broad-snouted),
Alligator missippiensis, Alligator sinensis (not included) 4) The species that do not gallop can still run as fast as the species that do gallop.
My video shows how quickly the alligator crossed the trail, along with slowed breakdowns of movement (I've made the animated gifs on this page from the same footage). There are dust plumes under the gator's feet as
it moves! The slowmotion view shows how the forefeet don't seem to add much thrust. To me, it seems that just the toes of the front feet touched the ground while crossing the trail. When the gator moved down slope, it
seemed like the front feet barely touched the ground at all--but by then it was in the plants so the front legs were hidden. The trail at that point is about 8 feet across (compared with my walking stick) but I didn't think
to take a picture at the time. The alligator appears to be half that, so about 4 feet long. The images below are frames from the video.




About 30 minutes later, I was near the Observation Tower (about 100 yards East of the gator crossing). A larger alligator was moving through the mud near the culvert. The gator moved towards a favored crossing spot.


I walked past to get the sun behind me, and the gator crossed. Although I've filmed many alligator crossings I have rarely caught the moment that the alligator lifts off the ground and takes the first step. I was very lucky
with the running alligator. But I missed the take off on this one.

animated GIF at normal speed       animated GIF at slowed down

We can watch this one in the video (and the animated gif) and compare to the smaller run that ran 30 minutes before. This was a typical high-walk. I also took pictures of my stick on the trail where the gator had crossed to
compare with the alligator. I guess this one was about 8 feet long. The images below are frames from the video. The person in the background (behind the tower) is standing where the small gator ran across earlier.




An alligator crossing the trail looks so...deliberate. Once a large alligator has decided to leave the general safety of the water for a certain purpose, there is little that will change its course. Smaller gators (less than
4 ft or so) tend to be more careful, and can be discouraged easier. But I've seen large gators walk through a group of people, another move towards a fish that had been dragged to shore-and even pursue that fish if it's been
taken out of the water. I watched an alligator "chase" a Great Blue Heron that had caught a fish out of a small pool that the gator had claimed. The fish was large, so the Heron walked out among the trees, then dropped
the fish for another spearing (as they do). The alligator saw that, and walked into the woods after it. The heron picked up its fish and moved further in; and the alligator followed with that slow, deliberate walk. I lost sight of them,
so I don't know how things turned out. The sight of a large alligator pursuing something it wants with that slow, focused walk can be intimidating. But imagine that alligator running and that's nightmare material. But, as stated,
I've seen many gators crossing land, and have seen very few moving with any rapidity while doing so--whether running or otherwise.
An odd thing about the usual high walk for me is that it happens slowly enough to hide some subtle details of the movement. But adjust the footage a bit, and I think I can see a "strut" as the gator pulls its tail along with each
step. It's clearest to me while looking at the rear legs and tail. 1) Left foot forward, put down flat. 2) Push with left foot as right steps forward. 3)right foot flat. 4)Push with right foot as Left Heel lifts and push with left toes (?),
repeat I think the "heel lift" is where the hips are lifted and tail is pulled forward. Someday I'll take a closer look at some of the gator movement studies I've found to see if I'm guessing right. So here's my very verbose description
of 2 sightings that lasted about 1 minute each. One other thing (for general information); I've gotten the following definition of animal gaits in this report:
Gait characterisation and classification in horses Justine J. Robilliard, Thilo Pfau and Alan M. Wilson
A gait is a repetitive ‘manner of walking or running’. Gaits are discrete patterns of foot-falls and are divided into symmetrical and asymmetrical.   In symmetrical gaits, each forelimb or hindlimb is considered to be used equivalently
with the same control of mass, and left/right foot-contacts occur at equal time intervals. Common examples of symmetrical gaits in quadrupeds are walk, trot and pace.
In asymmetrical gaits, the limbs are considered to be employed differently, as there are different limb forces, and foot–ground contacts are not spaced evenly in time. Common examples of asymmetrical gaits in quadrupeds are:
canter and gallop.

07/03/2022 - From Brazos Bend State Park mostly on 07/03/2022 I'm posting this in November, after we've gotten rain. I'm using this update to record some changes in Pilant Lake
starting from February 2022, up to 7/3/2022--which is when I witnessed the alligator demonstration. Let's go.
The picture below shows Pilant Lake on 2/6/2022. Point of view is a few hundred yards West of the Observation Tower.

The pictures below shows Pilant Lake on 6/5/2022. At this time, a lot of the water had left the lake. The channel running from the left was partially from the flow of water draining to the lower
area, and partially from alligator traffic. The second picture clearly shows the drag marks and footprints of at least one gator. The third picture was taken later in the day, after the activity
that was going on in the background of the first two images, and the gators left the lake. The long image below those two shows what was visible in the background of the two images.
I've already described what was going on back there on one of my other web pages.

The first two pictures below are from a week later, 06/12/2022. This is about halfway down the Spillway Trail, West of the Observation Tower. The area to the North, usually submerged was
getting growth, while the remaining aquatic life was in the water near the trail. The second two pictures show Pilant Lake on 6/19/2022. There's water there in mid-June, but it continued to
go away. The surface of the water was bare, and there were few alligators visible. There were some birds foraging on the mud flat in the center, mostly Roseate Spoonbills. The Spoonbills
were there because many had hatched on the West end of Pilant Lake.


Now--we are at July 3, 2022. Over the course of the year (I'm writing this in November) we watched the lakes shrink until mid August. Many people asked what the alligators do when they
lose a lake, or where they go when they leave a dry lake. Trenches were visible when things were totally dry--but by they hadn't gotten that bad this week. The North side of the Spillway Trail
had some water remaining near the Spillway Bridge, but it turned into a morass of muck as one moved East. The two images below show the low water about halfway down the trail.



There were still a few alligators along that length, but some of them were not friendly to each other. I followed one that had been chased East. It moved through the deep muck, pushing a blob of
water and mud in front of it. There is also video of this interesting movement at this link.


It moved by using a walking/sliding gait. Occasionally it lifted a leg out of the mud to take a step. It continued walking at a "trot", with rear leg on one side and front leg on the other moving
forward for each step.


A young Gallinule and a White Ibis that had been foraging in the mud moved back as the alligator pushed by. Even when apparently mired in a morass of mud; an alligator can still move fast
enough to grab prey if it is close enough. The middle picture shows the blob of water that moved ahead of the alligator. At first glance, it appeared to be a current or flow, but it was entirely
being pushed by the alligator.


The last two images show that the level of mud behind the gator was lower--demonstrating that it was the force pushing the liquid. The alligator made it to the far end of the trail, where there
was a deeper area in the corner where the Spillway Trail meets the Elm Lake Trail. How many other alligators must have taken the same route, and formed that trench?