Fig. 3. Spinning maneuver of juvenile alligator after initiation (0 ms). The alligator has bitten onto a piece of meat. During the spinning maneuver, the rotational axes of the head, body and tail maintain a fixed relative orientation to the frame of reference of the aquarium. Note that the relative orientation of the body parts do change with respect to each other. For instance, the tail starts bent to the left side of the alligator at 20 ms, but is bent to the right side of the animal by 120 ms, although still on the left side of the image. The limbs are appressed against the body and the head and tail are canted at angles to the body axis. The head, body and tail all spin in the same rotational direction with the same angular speed.