Alligators, crocodiles, and gharials aren’t known for their easygoing nature—and they get even less friendly when you force them to run on a treadmill. But it’s worth it, because watching crocodilians exercise might teach us how dinosaurs breathed. Crocs and dinos are distant cousins and likely share some physiology.
The problem is, when crocs aren’t being ferocious predators they’re lazy bastards. To get American alligators to walk the custom treadmill in his lab at Cal State San Bernardino, vertebrate physiologist Tomasz Owerkowicz has to tap the base of their tails. Otherwise they’ll just lie there, and the moving belt will dump them off. “It’s like making your kid go outside and play when all she wants to do is lie on the sofa,” Owerkowicz says. His reptile-fitness equipment has high walls to keep the gators from scrambling away to avoid their jog—which they take at just over half a mile per hour, for three to five minutes.
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