Featured Image Credit: Shallotte River Swamp Park Facebook
Alligators in Ocean Isle Beach, North Carolina instinctively placed their noses above the water to withstand the freezing swamps. You may have seen the viral photos floating around the internet.
Shallotte River Swamp Park posted a Facebook video called “Alligators On Ice” which displayed the Alligator’s big noses and teeth sticking out of the frozen water. The Facebook video received 45,000 views in the first 21 hours of being posted.
“As it froze they left their noses out of the ice so that they can breathe. No, I had absolutely no idea myself” said the narrator of the Facebook video.
Park officials said that the alligators will continue to remain in hibernation-like state called brumation until the ice melts.
Shallotte River Swamp Park said in the post, “They are trying to conserve energy to maintain body temperature.”
Alligators were almost wiped out of North Carolina in the early 20th century but are now found more so in southeasterner corner of the state. Experts said alligators prefer interconnected habitats that rivers and wetlands offer along with coastal creeks and ponds.
A Carolina Coastal Review predicted that alligators may appear as far out west as Richmond County even though there is none currently living naturally passed Scotland County.
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