Alligator Eats Donuts (Video)

Outdoor photographer Gerald Burleigh is known widely in his home state of Texas for his whitetail deer photography as well as his images of the life cycles of waterfowl. While setting a game camera to lure in feral hogs on a stretch of property near the Neches River in Southeast Texas, he came across something interesting. An alligator found his bait pile and came in and ate corn and gorged itself on some old donuts.

Alligators are carnivores that will eat virtually anything that swims in front of them but mainly eat fish and turtles.

This one apparently has a sweet tooth.

Something else interesting about this video is the camera is not set directly by the water. This alligator had to walk a pretty good way to find the food.

Alligators will actually cover long distances during the mating period and some of the very largest alligators are found in ponds far from the main waterways where they have set up after arriving there to find no mates during breeding season.

These areas house some of the very largest alligators because they are detached from their main habitat. The biggest alligators are targeted during the alligator hunting season so many of the largest specimens are those that have forsaken coastal marshes, main river channels and other spots close to civilization.

Alligators can grow to impressive sizes but it takes the correct genetics, available food and cover and the ability to live their maximum life cycle which can be upwards of 80 years.

Hunting pressure targeting the very largest alligators takes away the largest adults so truly large alligators (over 11 feet) are become increasingly rare.

Alligator populations themselves are high but those of maximum size are not as common as they used to be.

This one looks as if it might not make it too much longer. Any alligator that is willing to gobble up donuts would no doubt had a hard time resisting a chunk of rancid chicken dangling over the water.

Chester Moore, Jr.