This baby alligator and about 40 of its siblings decided the first day of fall classes would be a great time to hatch. Ph.D. student Duncan Leitch, BA’06, helped the alligator break out of its egg, much as a mother alligator would. Leitch, a student in the Vanderbilt Brain Institute’s Neuroscience Graduate program, studies American alligators under the direction of Ken Catania, Stevenson Professor of Biological Sciences. They’re interested in the reptiles’ ability to sense movement using specialized sensory receptors along the edge of their jaws and how that might relate to neural processes in humans.
photo credit: Steve Green