Of Course Scientists Are Attaching Cameras to Alligators

The highly technical name for the device you see above is a "Crittercam," and it figured into a monitoring project that researchers conducted in the Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge, located a stone's throw away from Cape Canaveral, Florida. James Nifong of the University of Florida and other scientists strapped these kinds of rugged cameras onto 15 gators. Then they set the reptiles loose to see how they hunted prey when humans weren't in their business.

The voyeuristic treasure the researchers recovered marks a "major step forward in not only furthering the understanding of crocodilian interactions in natural ecosystems, but also in providing valuable insight regarding the feeding behavior of an ecologically important apex predator whose cryptic nature has historically hindered such research," they said in a study just published in PLOS ONE. Among their insights: