Community Magazine July 2014

90 COMMUNITY MAGAZINE The Crocodile Crocodiles, alligators and caimans are reptiles that belong to the group known as crocodilians. Crocodilians arewater-dwelling animals that prefer to live in large bodies of shallowwater, sluggish rivers, and open swamps. They have large, lizard-shaped bodies, long snouts, tough, scaled hides, sharp teeth, and two pairs of short legs. Their feet are webbed, so they can walk easily on the soft, wet ground. They have long, strong tails which enable them to swim and move about in the water. On land they can run for short, rapid bursts, but they get tired very quickly. They can also execute several-meter-long jumps out of the water. The saltwater and Nile crocodiles of Africa are the largest, as well as the most vicious, of the crocodilians. C rocodiles live throughout the watery tropics of Africa, Asia, America, and Australia. They can swim as fast as twenty-five miles per hour and are able to stay underwater for two to three hours at a time. As whacky as it sounds, crocodiles are known to swallow stones when they are on the banks of the water. Doing so helps their digestive systems and also contributes to their water buoyancy. Additionally, it is thought that by swallowing stones, crocodiles may also be able to swim to deeper parts of the water. Crocodiles are ambush hunters; they wait for fish or land animals to come close and then rush out to attack them. As cold-blooded predators, they have very slow metabolisms, so they can survive long periods without food. Despite their appearance of being slow, crocodiles are top predators in their environment. They feed on fish, other reptiles, birds, and mammals. Occasionally, large crocodiles may attack large animals and people, too. Like other reptiles, all crocodiles lay eggs in nests built on the land. Some crocs build a mound from vegetation and mud, and then dig a hole in the top, into which they lay their eggs before covering them over. Other species simply dig a hole in the sand and lay their eggs in the cavity. The female crocodile lays between 20-80 eggs at a time. Incredibly, when it is time for the eggs to hatch, the baby crocodiles inside grow an “egg tooth,” a point at the end of their noses that they use to break through their shells so that they can get out. After a baby crocodile has hatched from its egg, its “egg tooth” slowly disappears. Most of the crocodile offspring are eaten in the first year of their lives by large fish, monitor lizards, hyenas, storks, herons, adult crocodiles, and even humans. The surviving crocodiles can live up to eighty years in the wild.