Unnerving swamp photo catches Alabama alligator with mouth contorted. Was it yawning?
Alligators don’t have to do much to scare people, but a photo posted this week on Facebook proves they’re even more terrifying when they yawn.
The image, shared by the Alabama Wildlife and Freshwater Fisheries Division, shows an alligator with its mouth stretched open so wide that the viewer can see past its teeth and straight down its fleshy pink throat.
Somewhere among all those bright pink flaps is a tongue that is “nearly the same length as their snout,” according to Everglades Outpost.
The photo was taken by wildlife photographer Rick Dowling in a “backwater” area off the Chattahoochee River, near the town of Eufaula. That’s in the eastern part of the state, along the Georgia border.
“Yes, he was yawning and I think he opened his mouth twice,” Dowling told McClatchy News.
“It was dusk when I saw him. He opened his mouth wide as the sun was shining in it and I got maybe three or four photos before he shut his mouth.”
Dowling didn’t say how large the alligator was. But alligators can grow longer than 13 feet and live 60 years in the southeastern U.S., the Savannah River Ecology Laboratory at the University of Georgia reports.
Alligators are coldblooded — meaning they assume the temperature of their environment — which forces them to sometimes “regulate body temperature by basking with (their) mouth open,” according to the Alabama Wildlife and Freshwater Fisheries Division.
All those flaps in the gator’s mouth are genetic mutations that allow the species to bite prey underwater “without flooding its throat,” according to the Kiawah Island Nature Program in South Carolina.
“When a gator submerges, water can easily enter into the mouth,” the nature program posted on Facebook.
“But alligators have a special flap (palatal valve) near the back of the tongue that seals the throat, preventing water from getting into the esophagus and trachea,“ the program says.
This story was originally published June 12, 2020 at 2:20 PM with the headline "Unnerving swamp photo catches Alabama alligator with mouth contorted. Was it yawning?."