Without a ripple in the water, alligators dive, surface or roll sideways, even though they lack flippers or fins. University of Utah biologists discovered gators maneuver silently by using their diaphragm, pelvic, abdominal and rib muscles to shift their lungs like internal floatation devices: toward the tail when they dive, toward the head when they surface and sideways when they roll.
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| ©Hannah Chirillo
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| T.J. Uriona, a University of Utah doctoral student in biology, holds a juvenile American alligator. Uriona and his professor, biologist C.G. Farmer, have published a study showing how alligators use muscles to move their lungs backward to help them dive, and to one side or the other to roll.
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