Man Calmly Hand Feeds Rescued Alligators

Chris Gillette of Florida’s Wildest went to the Everglades Outpost in Homestead, Florida, to visit with the rescued resident alligators. While he was there, he calmly fed them by hand, which made him very popular with the congregation of alligators at the sanctuary. In fact, some of them even recognized their names when he called them over for food.

Huge trained alligators – know their names and come when called!

Gillette, who is an expert in alligator behavior, warned that an untrained person should never feed alligators because sometimes they don’t know the difference between food and feeder.

Once you feed them they learn to associate you with food you don’t have food you are the food and that is the cause of a lot of human alligator problems and deaths and so don’t ever feed them not only is feeding them bad for the person it’s also very bad for the alligator because the fed gator is a dead gator. …Once they learn this behavior they learn to associate people with food even if they’re not really aggressive they just hang out too close they’re going to be shot and killed for that. 

via Dooby Brain