On a humid and windy winter day, creatures cover beneath the nonetheless Idabel swamps. Tim Patton has made it his purpose to search out out as a lot about them as he can.
Fueled for the weekend by 5 breakfast burritos, he’s able to camp out on the Red Slough Wildlife Management refuge for a pair days to get a close-up have a look at the native alligator inhabitants.
Patton is a professor at Southeastern Oklahoma State University in Durant and is one among three researchers engaged on an alligator analysis mission within the southeastern a part of the state.
The mission is funded by the Oklahoma Wildlife Department.
On a November morning, Patton ventures out into the murky waters to examine his traps. This time just some innocent turtles took the bait.
“If we catch as many alligators as we did turtles, this job would be a lot easier,” Patton remarks.
The traps are one of the ways Tim and his research partners capture alligators.
The most effective method is a more aggressive one: an after dark search by boat, where they catch gators with a pole.
Patton says the key is looking for beady red eyes peering across the water.
“When you get the eye shine, they’ll just sit there,” he says. “The largest we’ve captured so far is right around 9 feet.”
Once caught, the alligators’ mouths are taped shut and they’re marked. Some of the gators are given a plastic tag and a chip. A couple of obtain radio transmitters to be tracked. The littlest get a small notch on their tails in order that researchers can examine again in and see how the gators have grown over time.
“Keep catching and tagging and catching and tagging,” Patton says.
The researchers will research alligators for 2 years, from infants to full-grown gators as much as 16 toes.
“We want to know how many, what’s the sex ratio, how many males, how many females, the size structure, how many little ones and big ones,” Patton explains.
Researcher Jared Wood has put up recreation cameras everywhere in the refuge. Wood is an Associate Professor of Biology at Southwestern Adventist University in Keene, Texas.
“Got a couple thousand videos and some of them are pretty remarkable,” Wood remarks.
The movies he has captured function a number of supporting actors, like an otter household making an attempt to infiltrate an alligator den. In one shot, you’ll be able to see a rabbit narrowly escape changing into dinner for a hungry gator mother.
“Everything’s like Christmas, what you get on that video, that camera,” Wood says.
For Jake Pruett, an assistant professor at Southeastern Oklahoma State University, finding out nature is a dream come true.
“The strangest critter out here is me,” Pruett says.
As alligators creatures swim via Oklahoma waters, the scientists proceed their search; all the time filled with surprises.
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