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FIRST COAST NEWS (Jacksonville, Florida) 20 October 06 Mythbusters TV Show Takes On Alligators (Jessica Clark)
St. Augustine, FL: Let the building and myth-busting begin.
The crew and hosts of the television show “Mythbusters” have landed in St. Augustine’s Alligator Farm.
They’ll be testing out a concept that many Floridians have heard of.
Kari Byron, a builder and personality on Mythbusters, said “The myth is if you run in a zigzag you can get away from crocodiles and alligators because they can’t turn on a dime like that.”
The crew will use the top portion of a crash test dummy and make legs for him out of fish-net stockings. The crew will fill the stockings with quail. They’ll attach the dummy to a mechanical track they’re building inside the Alligator Farm, and they’ll move the dummy in a zigzag motion and in a straight line. The goal is to find out if the alligators and crocodiles will run after it in the same way.
The crew is skeptical because the director of the Alligator Farm says it is not the alligator’s nature to chase after its prey.
John Bruegen is the Director of the Alligator Farm. He says if the TV crew has time, they will tackle other concepts.
One of those theories is that alligators and crocodiles have jaws that are hinged differently. The idea is that alligators drop their bottom jaw to open their months and crocodiles lift their top jaw.
The building and myth-busting will take two days. The episode will air on the Discovery Channel in about four months.
Mythbusters TV Show Takes On Alligators

They must be paying some pretty good money for St. Augustine to allow them to do this (not to mention publicity).