Fear Not - These Alligators Are Alive!

A North Carolina swamp park has posted video of alligators frozen in a pond showing how the cold-blooded animals can survive just about anything and don't much care what Mother Nature throws at them.

During last week's "bomb cyclone" that put much of the east coast in a deep freeze, alligators at the Shallotte River Swamp Park in Ocean Isle Beach gave us all a quick science lesson in how cold-blooded animals survive cold snaps. Alligators stick their snouts out through ice and are essentially frozen in place until the temperature warm back up. 

The video posted by the family-owned outdoor park, has been seen thousands of times on Facebook. George Howard, the narrator of the video gets up close to the snouts poking through the ice. 

"Just hanging out in the water. Pretty amazing. Look at those teeth. This is the time of year when they are just hanging out, waiting for it to get warm.”

When the weather gets that cold, alligators seem to instinctually know when the water is about to freeze. To survive, they stick their noses out before the water freezes over, allowing ice to form around their snouts. The animals then enter a state of "brumation," a type of hibernation. 

Alligators can regulate their body temperature in all types of weather according to experts, and will essentially remain frozen in place until the ice melts. 

Shallotte River Swamp Park is located about 200 miles east of Charlotte and has about a dozen alligators according to its website. The gators are "rescues" that had been in captivity, some of whom had been used as "guard animals" by drug dealers. 


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