According to recent studies, crocodiles and their relatives are highly intelligent animals capable of adopting sophisticated behaviors. These include advanced parental care of the young, complex communications, and the use of hunting tools . An investigation by the New University of Knoxville (Tennessee) published in the journal Ethology Ecology and Evolution shows the degree of sophistication reached by their hunting techniques.
Vladimir Dinets, a professor in the Department of Psychology at the aforementioned American University, has discovered that these reptiles work as a team to get their prey. Studying in the wild the predatory abilities of crocodiles and other relatives such as alligators and alligators is very difficult because they hunt by ambush , have slow metabolisms and eat less frequently than warm-blooded animals. As if that were not enough, they are nocturnal and their main hunting territory is the swamps and marshy waters of marshes and tropical rivers. Many times it is non-specialist people who accidentally observe their predatory actions, so they are forgotten.
To overcome these difficulties, Dinets took to Facebook and other social networks to ask amateur naturalists to account for their discoveries, and he also consulted scientific journals from the 19th century and carried out more than 3,000 hours of observations himself.
With all this, he concluded that coordination and collaboration between crocodiles occurred in all recorded cases of siege . In crocodiles and alligators there were highly organized strategies to corner their prey. Crocodiles, for example, swim in a circle around a school of fish and gradually narrow the circle until the fish run out of space. Then, taking turns, the “coconuts” cut the circle down the center and catch the fish.
Also the papers are distributed according to the size. The larger alligators chase the fish in the deepest parts of the lakes and make them head to the shallow ones, where other smaller and more agile congeners block their exit. There were some cases of large saltwater crocodiles scaring a pig into the water , where other reptiles with sharp fangs awaited them.
“All these data indicate that crocodiles must belong to a select club of hunters – some 20 animal species, at most, including humans – capable of coordinating their actions in a complex way and dividing up the roles according to the abilities of each In fact, perhaps only humans surpass crocodiles in hunting ability, “says Dinets.
