Amy Wang

In the article from the Washington Post on MSN’s website, Amy Wang describes a unique phenomenon occurring off the coasts of Florida and Georgia: American alligators are eating sharks and stingrays, unusual prey for the species to eat. Wang goes on to describe the methods by which researchers are studying the diets of the alligators (by pumping their stomachs) and some of the details possibly contributing to the reason why the species is beginning to go out of the freshwater habitats in which alligators naturally live into the salt water to hunt for sharks and stingrays. Many of the concepts discussed in class and in various modules are featured in this article including learning, memory, sensation & perception, statistics and more.
In the …show more content…
As mentioned in the article, alligators must return to freshwater eventually. Therefore, it is crucial for them to learn the details of the environment if they wish to return to hunt. Though it is not discussed in the article, alligators may have a similar memory storage system as humans. If they wanted to form long term memories, they would be processing the information in their hippocampus, or a related structure for reptiles. Another important concept featured in this article was sensation and perception. Using the sensory receptors on their tongues (and possibly more) alligators can likely determine the salinity of water, allowing them to know what is a suitable environment for long term stays. After undergoing sensation to detect the signals, perception in the brain allows the alligators to process the information and making sense out of it. One last concept featured in this article was statistics, specifically sample size. The article mentions that more than 500 alligators were caught and had their stomachs pumped. This sample size stresses the importance of having a large sample size, as sampling only a few alligators could have led to skewed