(Xinhua/Agencies) With a view to prevent crocodiles from returning to residential neighborhoods, Florida wildlife managers have temporarily affixed magnets to the reptiles’ heads in order to disrupt their homing ability.
Lindsey Hord, the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission’s crocodile response coordinator, said Tuesday, ‘We said, ‘Hey, we might as well give this a try,’
Crocodiles are notoriously territorial and when biologists move them from urban areas to new homes in the wild, they often go right back to the place where they were captured, traveling up to 10 miles a week to get there.
Scientists believe they rely in part on the Earth’s magnetic fields to navigate, and that taping magnets to both sides of their heads disorients them.
‘They’re just taped on temporarily,’ Hord said. ‘We just put the magnets on when they’re captured and since they don’t know where we take them, they’re lost. The hope would be that they stay where we take them to.’
Hord and his co-workers have tried it on two crocodiles since launching the experiment in January, affixing ‘a common old laboratory magnet’ to both sides of the animals’ heads. One got run over by a car and died, but the other has yet to return, Hord said.
Once an endangered species, American crocodiles’ numbers have rebounded to nearly 2,000 in coastal south Florida, their only habitat in the continental United States. That puts them in increasing contact with humans, especially in areas where backyards border on canals around Miami and the Florida Keys.
Crocodiles are still classified as a threatened species, so game managers are reluctant to move them to new areas where they might be killed battling other resident crocodiles for turf rights, Hord said. Unlike alligators, which are far more numerous, each crocodile is considered important to preserving the species, he said.
‘These crocodiles are unique and valuable creatures and we feel like we have a responsibility to live with these animals as much as we can,’ he said.
Comments