The disturbing video of sea creatures devouring an alligator

Craig McClain and Clifton Nunnally, researchers from the Marine Consortium at the University of Louisiana, USA, conducted a project with which he placed three dead alligators between 2 and 2.5 meters in different locations in the Gulf of Mexico to study how materials from terrestrial environments enrich food webs in ocean environments.

The research also aims to explain how large extinct reptiles that lived in the ancient oceans have fallen prey to small. Some species that eat these alligators have been little explored for science around their diet.

L & # 39; s experienceIt was videotaped in February by a remotely operated vehicle at a depth of 2,000 meters. The record showed that giant isopods in deep water were quick to detect the bodies of reptiles that could feed them.

These crustaceans, the size of a football, arrived less than 24 hours after the installation of alligators on the seabed. and, using their powerful jaws, they tore the reptilian's hard skin and swallowed his flesh until they could barely move.

Isopods have a huge storage capacity for accumulated energyafter such a meal, they will not have to feed for months or even years.

This is the first time scientists have used this method to "examine the role of alligators in biodiversity and the carbon cycle in the deep oceans," McClain explained on his website. Deep Sea News.

Experiments with alligators can help study past food webs becauseThese animals are an approximation of the great marine reptiles that lived millions of years ago, such as ichthyosaurs, mosasaurs and plesiosaurs.