A North Carolina swamp park has posted a video explaining how alligators survive in a frozen pond, and it's both creepy and bizarre. The coldblooded animals essentially allow themselves to be frozen in place, with their noses just above the surface, according to a video posted by Shallotte River Swamp Park. What passersby see is noses and teeth — really big teeth — sticking out of the ice. That ice formed when a massive "bomb cyclone" storm blew up the coastline, bringing record lows. The alligators seem to instinctively know when the water is about to freeze, and they respond by sticking their noses above the surface at just the right moment, allowing the water to freeze around them. Alligators then enter hibernation-like state. The animals can regulate their body temperature in all sorts of weather, park officials said, and can essentially remain frozen in place until the ice melts.

Experts debate: Can lobsters feel pain?

The government of Switzerland kicked off a debate this week when it ordered that lobsters and other crustaceans no longer be dropped alive into boiling water. Boiling them causes pain, the government said, and should be replaced by a more rapid method of death — such as stunning. Still, even the scientist who conducted the foundational research for the government's decision said he's not 100 percent sure that lobsters can feel pain. But he's concerned enough that he's only cooked a live lobster once and doesn't plan to do it again. "There's no absolute proof, but you keep running experiments and almost everything I looked at came out consistent with the idea of pain in these animals," said Robert Elwood, professor emeritus of animal behavior at Queen's University in Belfast, Northern Ireland. Elwood's position — and the Swiss government's — is outside the scientific mainstream, said Joseph Ayers, a professor of marine and environmental sciences at Northeastern University in Boston. Lobsters lack the brain anatomy needed to feel pain, said Ayers. Others come in somewhere in between. Michael Tlusty, a lobster biologist at the University of Massachusetts Boston, agrees that lobsters lack the brain anatomy that we associate with pain sensation. But crustacean brains are so different from ours, he said, that no one can really say for certain what they are feeling.

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