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Welcome to Brainstuff, a production of IHeart Radio.

Hey, Brainstuff, Lauren Vogelbaum here.

Much like the Cheetah, the alligator, is an incredibly fast runner.

You've probably seen one rise up on its long muscular legs and sprint the length of a football field in pursuit of fleeing prey.

No, you've never seen that? What you've probably seen is more like this. You're standing by a pond, checking out some kind of heron, when you notice

two small bumps protruding from the water. After you take note of the nearby, don't feed the

alligator's sign, you put two and two together. Those bumps are the eyes of a gator lazily floating

in the pond. You might be frightened for a moment, but then you remember

the classic adage. You can escape an alligator if you run in a zigzag. And this brings you comfort.

But should it? This saying, which is so old and so widespread that it's virtually impossible to determine where

or why it started, implies, first, that an alligator is likely to chase you across land,

and second, that alligators can run faster than humans, at least when they're running in a

straight line. Neither of these are exactly true.

What's true for sure is that you should avoid encouraging an alligator to chase you under any

circumstances, but they don't really conduct chases on dry land because that's not what

they're built for. And if one did, you could almost certainly out-sprint it.

Today, let's talk a little about alligator safety, including how alligators do and don't attack.

The American alligator is an apex predator and keystone species in its native environment,

which is the mostly freshwater systems of

the American South, ranging from eastern Texas up into Arkansas and across the warm southeast, up to

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