You can expect buzzing helicopter blades to annoy or annoy nearby animals. But the low-flying helicopter appeared to signal mating season for the reptiles at the crocodile farm.

“All the big males stood up and roared into the sky and after the helicopters flew away they started mating like crazy,” said John Lever, owner of the Kurana Crocodile Farm in Queensland, Australia.

It’s not clear exactly what excited the alligators about the Chinook helicopter, but experts suspect the animals may have confused it with a storm. That’s right, storms really bother alligators.

October and November are the spring months for Australia and typical mating seasons for the country’s saltwater crocodiles. It is also the rainy season when storms are common in some parts of the continent.

“Mating is generally a seasonal phenomenon because [крокодили] “I want to coincide with the best time to lay eggs in a nest or nest,” herpetologist Mark O’Shea of ​​the University of Wolverhampton told LiveScience.

Mating during storm season means that when females lay their eggs a few weeks later the weather is generally less severe and therefore there is less risk of their eggs being drowned in floods.

So the timing seemed right, and the helicopter’s sound and vibration may have mimicked a storm, signaling to the male alligators that it was time to head out. The movement of Chinook blades can also cause storm-like changes in atmospheric pressure.

Or, according to another theory, O’Shea said, the alligators may have confused the helicopter’s roar with the roaring and slapping of other males’ tails. Whatever the reason, the next step for female alligators is to build nests for their eggs. Using soil and decaying plant debris, they create mounds where dozens of eggs hatch.

For about three months, mothers aggressively defend their eggs. Lever’s farm is home to approximately 3,000 reptiles, which he raises for meat and skin as well as a tourist attraction.