THE NEW YORK TIMES – An enduring urban legend has it that blind, albino alligators patrol New York City’s sewers.
These mythical crocodilians have become ingrained in the city’s lore, and some New Yorkers even celebrate Alligator in the Sewer Day each February.
But in Florida, alligators in the sewers are no myth. The reptiles routinely find their way into municipal drainpipes. In late January, a 10½-foot gator was rescued in Cape Coral after it got stuck in a storm drain.
And not all alligators end up in sewers by accident.
“It’s like something out of ‘Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles,’” said Alan Ivory, a Ph.D. student at the University of Florida who led the research. “The abundance of animals down there was surprising.”
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While there has been thorough research on rats in sewer systems, what other animals are up to under the streets is less documented. Mr. Ivory and his colleagues suspected that these subterranean labyrinths, which are built to divert storm water and are separated from sewage systems, serve as important pathways for urban animals.
Mr. Ivory and his colleagues focused on storm water sewers under the city of Gainesville. The scientists outfitted motion-activated trail cameras with magnetic mounts and fastened them underneath manhole covers. Overall, 39 cameras were deployed in 33 storm water drains.
The cameras were left for 60 days, but not all of them survived that long. Some were swept away by storm water, while others were pilfered by bandits with sticky paws.
“We would have raccoons steal cameras every now and then,” Mr. Ivory said. “They would climb up the ladders and tear them off the manholes.”
Despite these masked marauders’ best efforts, the team was able to recover most of the cameras, which recorded nearly 3,800 sightings of 35 animal species …
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