An alligator swims by the reflection of NASA's Space Shuttle "Discovery" as she sits bolted to Pad 39 A at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida on August 25, 2009. Discovery's launch was scrubbed last evening due to unstable weather conditions and thunderstorms in the vicinity of the Center. Launch was rescheduled for 26Aug at 1:10 AM. UPI/Joe Marino-Bill Cantrell | License Photo

An American alligator at the Royal Palm area of the Everglades National Park, in Florida City, Florida on December 8, 2007. (UPI Photo/Michael Bush) | License Photo

KISSIMMEE, Fla., June 8 (UPI) -- Mating Florida alligators respond to the note of B flat -- at least when played on a tuba through the wood of a boardwalk.

At least that's what a Tampa Tribune reporter discovered in an attempt to replicate a 1944 experiment, "Response of Captive Alligators to Auditory Stimulation," conducted at the Museum of Natural History in New York.


The Tribune experiment was conducted at Gatorland, a tourist attraction near Kissimmee with some help from William Mickelsen, the Florida Orchestra's star tuba player, and one of his students.

The group discovered alligators swam toward the sound when Mickelsen and John Banther played a sustained low B flat. When the players got down on the boardwalk and played through the wood, the male alligators echoed the sound.

Mating male alligators are famously noisy, bellowing and roaring in the swamps in the spring. Tim Williams, an alligator wrangler who guided the group, said he has also heard them respond to the noise of close-up airboats and to the sound of the space shuttle passing over Gatorland during landings at Cape Canaveral.