'There, now that's a close-up,' Williams said and tossed the camera back to the front row. Williams grabbed the cheap camera, shoved it down the front of his pants and snapped, or pretended to snap, a photo. 'You want to get a real good close-up picture of me?' he asked the student. 'Help! I'm Braniff Airlines! I can't land!' Williams shouted out with a reference to Braniff, which had gone out of business earlier that year.Īt one point, he stopped to address a young woman who was snapping photos with her Instamatic camera from the front row. Happy to a plane flying over the stadium. 'He never performed for a crowd as large as Gator Growl.'ĭuring his torqued-up performance, Williams riffed on everything from a part of his anatomy he called Mr. 'Williams was so nervous,' musician Barry Sides told the newspaper in Gainesville last week. It was held in the football stadium, The Swamp, and there wasn't an empty seat in the house. Williams was the star at that year's Gator Growl show for the University of Florida's Homecoming. I saw Williams perform his stand-up routine when his career was white hot and he was a man on fire. 'Even if it's not alligator bellowing season, you never want to approach an alligator, you want to give it space.Watch Video: Mark Hinson on Robin Williams You want to give them the respect and the distance that they they deserve,' Griffin said. You're coming into their house and their home. 'What we tell people when they come to the refuge to visit is, this is where the alligators live. They are especially mobile this time of year because of mating season. There have been multiple alligator sightings in the Houston area as they are native to the region. When a male alligator bellows, water droplets form around its spine from an inaudible frequency released.

It's almost like advertising yourself, how big you are and where you are to try to attract a mate.' 'Once one starts (bellowing), it will trigger all the other ones in the area. 'You can definitely hear it even if you can't see it - even as a visitor in all of the visitor areas,' Griffin said. It was her first time witnessing the act, she said During courtship, bellowing can go back and forth for several days until the right match is found.Īllison Griffin, a biologist at Aransas National Wildlife Refuge, was there when the video of the alligator bellowing was taken. The female determines the size of the male alligator based on how intense and deep the bellow is. She is looking for a mate that is larger than herself to give her offspring their best chance at survival, experts said. While both exude the same type of sound, water droplets form on the spine area of a male alligators when they bellow because there is an inaudible frequency they produce.įemale alligators begin to bellow when they are calling for a mate. In the video, a female alligator is seen bellowing and a male gator can be heard responding with the same sound. Mating season begins in May and June, and nesting takes place in June and July. Courtship, the time where alligators are finding a mate by bellowing, begins in April. It is part of the courtship behaviors for alligators weeks before they mate.

The bellowing sound is common this time of year in wetland areas home to gators like Aransas National Wildlife Refuge. Fish and Wildlife Service Why do alligators bellow?

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