This is either incredibly brave or incredibly stupid - or more likely both.

In a series of videos going viral on social media, tour guide Lance LaCrosse is shown in a Louisiana swamp swimming with several large, wild alligators.

LaCrosse not only dishes out chicken to the animals, by hand, he also feeds them marshmallows from his mouth.

One alligator even gets close enough that he could bite his head off. Thankfully it only has eyes for the food on offer and quickly snaps up the marshmallow.

LaCrosse also plays about with the creatures - swimming with them, messing around with them and even letting them climb on him. Then, for an encore, he lifts an alligator partially out of the water and waves its leg around to say goodbye to the tourists watching from the safety of a boat.

The alligator, a fierce apex predator, somehow tolerates this.

“I was worried about his safety,” Oregon tourist Stacy Hicks, who shot the videos, told ABC News. "Especially since he told the group he had been bitten a few days before.”

The videos have also caught the attention of the authorities, who on Thursdayordered LaCrosse to stop because feeding gators in waterways is illegal under Jefferson Parish law.

Lacrosse seems undeterred

"I still can mess with the alligators. I can dangle my fingers in the water,'' he told NOLA.com. "I'm going to get them to come close. Some of the stuff you can't make them do no more. I'm still going to swim.''