SLEEPING MENACE

Wairarapa Times-Age, 27 October 1939, Page 7

SLEEPING MENACE

ALLIGATORS OF THE AMAZON. EXPERIENCES OF TRAVELLERS. Alligators are now hibernating in the mud of the Amazon rivers, where they have dug themselves in to pass away the dry season, states a writer in a London Journal. Travellers in that mighty Amazon river system which drains more than 2,500,000 square miles of South America, may at present explore thousands of square miles, and look in vain for the most characteristic living product of the area, the alligator. The reptiles are asleep in the mud. asleep beneath the raging heat of the Amazonian dry season, as deeply as a hedgehog in winter. Crossed by the Equator, the Amazons know no winter but they have their dry and wet seasons, and each causes a migration among the alligators. The wet seasons fill the rivers and flood the forests as if seas had marched inland. Then the alligators migrate to the interior pools and boggy forests. The heat of tropical summer dries up even Amazon floods, not in the great main stream of the rivers, but in the less constant. Then the reptiles descend Jo the rivers, dig themselves into the mud, and go to sleep while the dry season lasts. We must keep the word alligator - in mind, for these are caymans, not crocodiles. But in habits crocodiles and alligators are identical: cunning, ferocious, timid in the face o) resolution, swift as a torpedo in action placid as a stranded log when gorged with food or waiting to pounce on un suspecting prey. The biggest species of cayman at tains a length of 20 feet and more, and has titanic strength. Its food comprises fish, birds, various animals, including jaguars, dogs, cattle, and human beings. Bates, the famous traveller, .had several experiences with these crea tures. Camped by a riverside in a hammock beneath an awning, with fires burning, he was awakened at dead ofj night to find that a cayman had crept out of the water and was about tc seize the camp poodle. Beaten off with firebrands, it retreated to the river, but next night it returned and entered the camp from the opposite direction, again to be baffled. Once seized, a human being is powerless in such a grip, unless he can so master his faculties as to get his hands to the brute’s head and thrust his thumbs into its eyes. That is a native trick and has saved many a life. Other wise the victim, unless forthwith rent asunder, is held under water until drowned. The reptiles are uniquely furnished for such a task. Their nostrils, opening on the summit of the snout, do not communicate, like our nostrils, with the throat, but open, behind the throat, into the wind pipe. Hence they can keep the mouth at its widest stretch in the water with not a drop penetrating the lungs. With the nostrils just above the surface, they preathe under water while their victim drowns. The crocodile of the Old World act in the same way.