Crocodiles Use Super Smart Group Hunting Tactics When Stalking Prey

Crocodiles aren't as primitive as some think they are. Instead, these animals are highly intelligent and are capable of sophisticated behavior, such as advanced parental care and complex communication. Now, scientists have taken a closer look at their hunting tactics and have found that these reptiles can actually work as a team to hunt their prey.

Actually studying crocodiles and their relatives, such as alligators and caimans, is difficult. Because they're ambush hunters and have slow metabolisms, they eat much less frequently than warm-blooded animals. This means that catching a crocodile in the act of hunting it hard to do.

In order to surmount these difficulties, the researchers employed Facebook and other social media sites in order to gather eyewitness accounts from amateur naturalists, crocodile researchers and nonscientists working with crocodiles. In addition, he looked through the diaries of scientists and conducted more than 3,000 hours of observations.

"Despite having been made independently by different people on different continents, these records showed striking similarities," said Vladimir Dinets, one of the researchers, in a news release. "This suggests that the observed phenomena are real, rather than just tall tales or misinterpretation."

In this case, the researchers found crocodiles and alligators conducting organized game drives. For example, crocodiles would swim in a circle around a shoal of fish, gradually making the circle tighter until the fish were forced into a tight ball. Then, the crocodiles would take turns swimming through the center and snatching up the fish.

"All these observations indicate that crocodilians might belong to a very select club of hunters-just 20 or so species of animals, including humans-capable of coordinating their actions in sophisticated ways and assuming different roles according to each individual's abilities," said Dinets. "In fact, they might be second only to humans in their hunting prowess."

The findings are published in the journal Ethology, Ecology & Evolution.