National Geographic: Realm of the Alligator

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This is a place of unseen danger

and subtle beauty.

It is a mysterious swamp called

"Okefenokee"...

the realm of the Alligator.

Okefenokee...

a forbidding place once

thought to harbor deadly diseases.

It sheltered fugitives

and inspired fear and superstition.

Today Okefenokee Swamp is a

well-know wildlife refuge.

But even for people like

biologist-photographer.

Dr. John Paling,

it is not entirely welcoming.

"Whenever I go back to Okefenokee now,

I've got mixed feelings about it".

From the air when you go across it,

it looks just so beautiful

and so serene and so natural

and so appealing.

And yet it can be a place

of such contrasts

that it seems almost as if man was never

intended to be there for long.

Okefenokee Swamp is a

A mosaic of islands, forest, marshes,

and open water.

It's famed for its alligators

and as the home of Pogo,

The comic-strip possum.

Although it overlaps

the Florida state line,

most of Okefenokee lies

in southeastern Georgia.

Okefenokee's population

of Seminole Indians

was driven out in the 1830s.

It was soon infiltrated

by white settlers called "swampers."

By the 1930s the swampers

were well established here,

Showing off alligator nests and eggs

for visiting photographers.

The swampers were a breed apart.

Many had few needs or

interests outside Okefenokee.

Those who knew them admired their

simplicity and self-reliance.

Soon after the turn of the century,

virgin stands of cypress brought

an invasion to the swamp.

This and earlier schemes

to build a ship canal

through the swamp and even to drain it

threatened to destroy Okefenokee.

But much of Okefenokee's prime timber

was cleared in less than 20 years.

Soon the swampers were alone again.

In 1937, Okefenokee was declared

a national wildlife refuge.

The human residents would

eventually leave.

One old-timer said,

we have the swamp and that's good.

But the swampers are all gone.

It's just a shame we can't have both.

More than fifty years

after they were abandoned,

relics of the old logging camps

still can be found.

Now deep in regrowing forest,

they're objects of curiosity

for biologists like

Kent Vliet and John Paling.

This is an old train.

Oh, this is?

The engine was up front...

and there would be water

in this old cylinder.

After working here for several seasons

Paling, born in England,

has become intimately familiar

with this Georgia swamp.

And there's something even more

dramatic over here.

Come and have a guess sat this.

What do you make of this?

That's some sort of a chassis.

Right.

Is that what they carried the logs on?

Nope. Try again.

Don't forget we're on

an island in the middle of Okefenokee,

so try again.

Some sort of swamp buggy

or something like that?

It's a car. They had three cars

on the island.

Really? That's a heavy...

Heavy duty, isn't it?

Heavy chassis...

But look how well the metal's

been preserved. Yeah.

And there's another thing

to pick out too.

You see why it's so good?

It's British

Right-hand drive.

It's Durant car that they brought over

on the trains for three people.

Is that right?

Yeah. There were three cars

that would chug up and down.

And this thing is preserved so well.

Many cars that are ten years old

don't have a chassis as good as that.

that's a very heavy chassis.

Right. I think it was just to

take people up and down.

There's a big turpentine still

at the end of the island too.

And there was a cinema,

there was a barber ship.

All gone now.

It's amazing.

Yep.

Trains.

When the logging company

finished up business,

they just tried to get all

the people off

when the National Parks Fish

and Wildlife took it in 1937.

Although parts of Okefenokee can be

traversed on foot,

it is better explored by boat.

The waters of Okefenokee look like

polished ebony,

dark but highly reflective.

It is a landscape of mirrors,

fascinating and surreal.

Kent Vliet is from

the University of Florida.

He's an expert on Okefenokee's most

famous resident, the alligator.

You know there's one right

in front of us, John?

Yep. I can see that one.

The ability to "call" alligators by

making certain curious sounds

is a valuable skill for

inquisitive biologists.

It's coming.

Whoa, hey.

Do they have binocular vision?

Can they see three dimensions?

Only a little small fraction of

their total visual field

just in front of their nose is binocular

Is he coming too close?

No, he's fine.

Wow.

Why do they have the yellow

ring around their eyes?

Is there a function that's

known for that?

A number of aquatic animals have

coloration around the eye like

that hippopotamuses do.

It might have something to do with

magnifying the light going into the eye

Sort of the reverse of a football player

putting black grease under the eye.

To make you see better in fact.

He's going to go down.

There he goes.

How long will they stay under water?

They can stay under a good long time.

When they're resting in the afternoon,

they go down for at least 15 minutes.

He's up again, look.

Yeah, there it is.

In the wintertime they may

stay down for days.

Nobody knows.

For days and days?

You mean they really...

You mean they hibernate?

Well, yeah, in the sense

it is a hibernation.

Their metabolism slows down so much

when they're that cold that they

just require almost no oxygen.

And they don't eat, obviously,

if they...

No, they don't eat for several months

during the winter.

I should think the average member

of the public that comes to Okefenokee

and sees an alligator thinks

they have really arrived in prehistory

Back in the Age of the Reptiles.

The study of alligator social behavior

has occupied Kent Vliet

for several years.

At his laboratory in Gainesville,

Florida,

he works with a wealth

of accumulated data.

We've learned that alligator

behavior is very, very complex.

It's much more complex and

much more sophisticated

than the behavior of other reptiles

that have been studied.

And so our dealings with alligator

behavior have been to try to

document the types of behaviors

they show and analyze these,

Not only in simple terms of

alligator behavior,

but as they might represent

the primitive beginnings

from which the more complex behaviors

of birds and mammals have evolved.

Most of Kent's observations

have been made at

the St. Augustine Alligator Farm.

Several hundred alligators are

on display here

for the enlightenment of tourists.

The farm affords easy access to

an otherwise elusive animal.

before that just to see

if the place would work out.

Are there many differences

between these gator-farm alligators

and the ones you get in the wild?

Well, captive animals look a

lot different from wild animals.

The most noticeable difference...

Is that the head of a captive animal

is much broader.

You don't have this beautifully

elongated snout.

That's because captive animals spend

so much time on land basking,

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