State Wildlife Department Helps Researchers Study Alligators In Southeastern Oklahoma

On a moist and windy winter day, creatures conceal beneath the nonetheless Idabel swamps. Tim Patton has made it his aim 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 Purple Slough Wildlife Administration refuge for a pair days to get a close-up take a look at the native alligator inhabitants.

Patton is a professor at Southeastern Oklahoma State College in Durant and is one in all three researchers engaged on an alligator analysis challenge within the southeastern a part of the state.

The challenge is funded by the Oklahoma Wildlife Division.

On a November morning, Patton ventures out into the murky waters to test his traps. This time just some innocent turtles took the bait.

“If we catch as many alligators as we did turtles, this job can be lots simpler,” Patton remarks.

The traps are one of many methods Tim and his analysis companions seize alligators.

The best methodology is a extra aggressive one: an after darkish search by boat, the place they catch gators with a pole.

Patton says the hot button is searching for beady pink eyes peering throughout the water.

“While you get the attention shine, they’ll simply sit there,” he says. “The most important we’ve captured to date is correct round 9 ft.”

As soon as caught, the alligators’ mouths are taped shut and they’re marked. A few 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 test again in and see how the gators have grown over time.

“Hold catching and tagging and catching and tagging,” Patton says.

The researchers will examine alligators for 2 years, from infants to full-grown gators as much as 16 ft.

“We need to know what number of, what is the intercourse ratio, what number of males, what number of females, the dimensions construction, what number of little ones and massive ones,” Patton explains.

Researcher Jared Wooden has put up recreation cameras all around the refuge. Wooden is an Affiliate Professor of Biology at Southwestern Adventist College in Keene, Texas.

“Obtained a pair thousand movies and a few of them are fairly outstanding,” Wooden remarks.

The movies he has captured characteristic a number of supporting actors, like an otter household making an attempt to infiltrate an alligator den. In a single shot, you may see a rabbit narrowly escape turning into dinner for a hungry gator mother.

“All the pieces’s like Christmas, what you get on that video, that digicam,” Wooden says.

For Jake Pruett, an assistant professor at Southeastern Oklahoma State College, finding out nature is a dream come true.

“The strangest critter out right here is me,” Pruett says.

As alligators creatures swim via Oklahoma waters, the scientists proceed their search; at all times filled with surprises.