Gators and wading birds, like this Tricolored Heron at Big Cypress National Preserve, have an unusual symbiotic relationship/Kirby Adams

In my hundreds of hours of watching birds in the Southeast, I’ve never seen an alligator eat a wading bird. They obviously do at some point, but I’ve never had the macabre pleasure of witnessing it. If you’re looking at a heron or egret in Everglades National Park, there’s likely an alligator in your field of vision at the same time. They’re often standing in close proximity.

Knowing that alligators eat birds is one thing, but hearing that the birds feed their young to alligators as part of an animal world protection racket is a different story.

First, it’s important to realize that the greatest threat to a heron’s reproductive success is not an alligator, but a predator that could get into their nest and consume eggs or chicks en masse. That makes raccoons and opossums that can easily climb up into a tree-top heron rookery the greatest enemy of wading birds. For the raccoons, the greatest risk to preying on heron eggs isn’t so much the adult herons’ deadly bills as it is the alligators in the water under the heron rookery. That’s where the relationship between herons and alligators gets weird.

Evidence from the Everglades suggests that wading birds select nest sites with a preference for areas patrolled by one or more big alligators. The alligators act as protectors of the nest, preventing tree-climbing mammals from getting to the eggs and young. In return for this, the alligators get the occasional young heron. Young birds often fall out of the nests – usually to their death whether there’s an alligator around or not. In this case, they become gator food. It’s also not uncommon for chicks to perish in the nest, in which case the adults will toss the corpse over the side to the protectors down below. That makes the gators want to stick around the area.

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The Broward Palm Beach New Times reported on this paper by likening this ecological relationship to the Mafia. The similarities are admittedly remarkable. A shop owner pays protection money to the mob to prevent even less desirable bandits from robbing the store. A Great Egret pays an alligator an occasional chick to keep the raccoons away. It’s both remarkable and unsettling how human behavior mimics animals.

At the same time, we need to be careful to understand that the animals are not mimicking human behavior. If you anthropomorphize the herons even a little, it would be easy to be repulsed by the idea of them tossing a weak baby bird to a waiting alligator. But herons aren’t short people with feathers. They’re birds that are operating on instinct and evolved behavior to maximize the survival of their species.

The alligators aren’t thinking things through with much cerebral power, either, but they are benefitting nutritionally. Research shows that the protector gators tend to be healthier and more robust than others in the area. Apparently in the Everglades, it pays to work for the mob.

The next time you’re walking Anhinga Trail and notice a big old gator floating under an egret nest, you’ll know there’s a lot more going on than meets the eye. The research paper can be found here. Be warned, it is extremely heavy on ecology and stats jargon! Here’s the local take, for easier reading and some humorous anthropomorphizing.