National Geographic: Realm of the Alligator Page #3

Year:
1987
49 Views


an alligator getting hold of you

and doing some real damage.

Kent has found that alligators here

at the farm are fairly harmless

especially during mating season.

And, to increase his knowledge,

he puts this opinion to

a highly meaningful test.

We learned early on in our research

that we needed to get off

the boardwalks

and go down and look at alligators

at an alligator's eye level.

Alligators communicate to

each other visually by the way

they hold their bodies

out of the water.

And we got down into the water

to better understand

how alligators are talking

to each other in a visual sense.

Kent has taken a lot of kidding

about being up to his eyebrows

in alligators and "seeing eye to eye"

with his study subjects.

But he feels that because he can

understand an alligator's body language

he can ward off trouble before

it becomes a real threat.

I look for animals that are obviously

directing themselves toward me

as aggressive animals.

The way they tilt their head

and how high they hold their body

out of the water

are all indications

if they're being aggressive or not.

Not all the animals that come

towards me are aggressive.

Many are curious, but I still have

to treat them all about the same.

I can't let them get too close to me.

I carry a large, about five-foot-long

cypress pole with me,

And if an animal does get too close,

I just nudge it away and try to

keep it out of strike range.

The meaning, if any, of an alligator's

impressive yawn is not understood;

But other behavior like this

head-slapping display

has been deciphered.

It is an assertive gesture,

advertising an alligator's

social position.

In courtship season

the alligators stage

"bellowing choruses" almost daily.

Both sexes bellow, but they

make somewhat different sounds.

Just before a male bellows,

he produces subsonic signals that make

the water around him dance.

In the wild these signals may

dram females from a great distance.

Courtship is a quiet and oddly tender

process

that Kent has sometimes been able

to witness at close quarters.

Courtship is usually initiated by one

animal swimming slowly up to another.

And this is a very important stage

of courtship

because they have to communicate

to each animal that they

have non-aggressive intentions.

And secondly,

they go into a period of touching one

another along the face and neck.

And they really orient to each

other's head and neck.

in the third phase of courtship these

touching behaviors

become more exaggerated

and the animals start pressing

each other down under water.

And these are real tests of strength

between the two animals.

Rate this script:0.0 / 0 votes

Unknown

The writer of this script is unknown. more…

All Unknown scripts | Unknown Scripts

4 fans

Submitted on August 05, 2018

Discuss this script with the community:

0 Comments

    Translation

    Translate and read this script in other languages:

    Select another language:

    • - Select -
    • 简体中文 (Chinese - Simplified)
    • 繁體中文 (Chinese - Traditional)
    • Español (Spanish)
    • Esperanto (Esperanto)
    • 日本語 (Japanese)
    • Português (Portuguese)
    • Deutsch (German)
    • العربية (Arabic)
    • Français (French)
    • Русский (Russian)
    • ಕನ್ನಡ (Kannada)
    • 한국어 (Korean)
    • עברית (Hebrew)
    • Gaeilge (Irish)
    • Українська (Ukrainian)
    • اردو (Urdu)
    • Magyar (Hungarian)
    • मानक हिन्दी (Hindi)
    • Indonesia (Indonesian)
    • Italiano (Italian)
    • தமிழ் (Tamil)
    • Türkçe (Turkish)
    • తెలుగు (Telugu)
    • ภาษาไทย (Thai)
    • Tiếng Việt (Vietnamese)
    • Čeština (Czech)
    • Polski (Polish)
    • Bahasa Indonesia (Indonesian)
    • Românește (Romanian)
    • Nederlands (Dutch)
    • Ελληνικά (Greek)
    • Latinum (Latin)
    • Svenska (Swedish)
    • Dansk (Danish)
    • Suomi (Finnish)
    • فارسی (Persian)
    • ייִדיש (Yiddish)
    • հայերեն (Armenian)
    • Norsk (Norwegian)
    • English (English)

    Citation

    Use the citation below to add this screenplay to your bibliography:

    Style:MLAChicagoAPA

    "National Geographic: Realm of the Alligator" Scripts.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 29 Mar. 2024. <https://www.scripts.com/script/national_geographic:_realm_of_the_alligator_14559>.

    We need you!

    Help us build the largest writers community and scripts collection on the web!

    Browse Scripts.com

    The Studio:

    ScreenWriting Tool

    Write your screenplay and focus on the story with many helpful features.