When you're a male gator looking for a mate, you don't need a dance floor to make all the right moves; the warm waters of the Everglades will do just fine.
Alligators flirt with physics. When males attract attention by quivering their spiky backs underwater, they create Faraday waves.
Not only do male alligators use Faraday waves to get a mate, but they may also produce the only examples (biological or physical) of these kind of waves in nature.
When a male alligator craves company, he issues a sound from his lungs that is too low to be heard. This infrasound causes him to vibrate violently and whips the water on his back into a froth of waves and leaping fountains.
These aren't just jets of water, though. They're Faraday waves. Most waves travel visibly. The crest starts in one place, and observers can see it move outwards. Faraday waves are standing waves. They do move, but they bounce off each other and off their surroundings in such a way that they seem to be simply rising up from the water. One of the characteristics of Faraday waves is that they have exactly half the frequency of the vibrational source.
Article:http://www.wired.com/2011/05/alligator-mating-physics/
Reference:http://scholarlyrepository.miami.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1520&context=oa_dissertations
Video:www.youtube.com/watch?v=RZRmAKuYYcU
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