Alligators, crocodiles, and gharials are exceptional ambush predators. Carrying on a tradition of wait-and-strike that has worked for them since the Mesozoic, living crocodylians can watch from the water’s surface with little more than their eyes and nostrils breaking the surface of the water. But even such effective camouflage isn’t always enough to sneak up on potential meals. Independent of each other, American alligators and mugger crocodiles appear to have learned to use lures to entice avian prey.

Psychologist Vladimir Dinets and coauthors described the sneaky behavior late last year in an Ethology Ecology & Evolution paper. Silly as it may sound, mugger crocodiles at India’s Madras Crocodile Bank and American alligators at the St. Augustine Alligator Farm Zoological Park balanced