Alligators may not be the most communicative and expressive creatures in the animal kingdom, but they have their distinct ways of relaying messages. From producing hissing sounds to inaudible infrasound, these reptiles surely know how to get their message across to others.
As the mating season begins, male alligators also start trying to impress females and they do it with their mating calls. A local photographer in South Florida used an infrared trail camera to capture bellowing alligators in the gator in the dark. Read on to find out why they produce this low-tone sound.
Bellowing Alligators in a South Florida Captured in Infrared Camera; What Does Their Unique Sound Means?
American Alligator Mating Calls
while bellowing loudly. The deep, throaty bellowing sounds are a way for male American alligators to call the attention of females.
The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (FWC) said that the mating season for alligators starts in early April, wherein the courtship phase has already begun. Included in their brochure is a guideline for Florida residents on how to coexist with these big reptiles during this season.
During mating season, it is normal for these scaly predators to be lounging around canals, swamps, and marchlands. However, one may also find them in unusual places. As of now, sightings of alligators have been reported in swimming pools, golf courses, garages, parking lots, front yards, and even the Navy runway.
The FWC explains that increased sightings and encounters of alligators are also attributed to the increase of the population in the state and the rise of people settling in waterfront areas. Combined with more people engaging in recreational water sports, it also increases the interactions between people and alligators.
Love and War: Alligators Signal Size by Bellowing
The 2017 research from a team of cognitive biologists at the University of Vienna showed that male alligators signal their size to females during the mating season using their bellows.
The study, titled "Formants Provide Honest Acoustic Cues to Body Size in American Alligators," published in Scientific Reports, identified the rumbling roars of alligators as their way to communicate their body size to avoid unpromising contests for mates and breeding areas.
As Science Daily reported, the size of alligators matters. The bigger they are, the more their advantage is against their competitors because female alligators only accept males larger than themselves. They opt for bigger male alligators as they are more likely to win territorial fights.
Confrontations between males during the mating season could result in lethal injuries, that is why it is advantageous if they could avoid it by signaling their body size to potential mates.
Lead author Stephan Reber explains that resonance frequencies depend on the length of an alligator's vocal tract. So, a larger alligator could produce lower resonances if they have longer tracts, which signals their large size.
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