Free Republic

Alligators don't typically swim, or die, in the ocean. But researchers dropped three of them, dead ones, underwater to see how deep-sea creatures would react to finding a new and unusual food source. The dead-alligator experiment was aimed at better understanding underwater food systems. Edibles like phytoplankton and other plant life don't exist on the deep-sea floor, so dwellers down there must sustain themselves by eating "marine snow" -- animal waste, scraps of decaying creatures and other organic debris that drifts from above. Because alligators sometimes find themselves in ocean waters, searching for new food sources or flushed there by...