|
A Bad Time To Be a Crocodile
They're not cuddly. They don't have big soulful eyes like seals. Most
of the animals the world is concerned with are beautiful, or they tug
at your heart-strings. Crocodiles have a pretty toothy leer. They eat
dogs in Florida -- sometimes even people. Who could love them ?
-- Wayne King, New York Zoological Society
Crocodiles are disappearing rapidly from the earth. In Niger a river swamp
is drained to grow vegetables for Europe, and in three years its crocs are
gone. In 1967 on Paris's Rue du Faubourg St. Honore, a wealthy American
paid $7500 for a portable bar covered with salt-water crocodile skin.
Meanwhile adventurers shoot forty crocs a night out of the Liverpool
River in northern Australia.
The crocodilians have been around for nearly 200 million years. There
are 23 species of them, including the American alligator. They have seen
continents shift and have persisted through the worst of many ice ages.
Yet in just thirty years, massive hunting and habitat destruction have
decimated every member of this ancient order, Crocodilia.
Although stringent laws have closed down most of the United States
market, as many as two million crocodilian hides a year are still trafficked
worldwide. Some experts warn that no crocodilian except the American
alligator may survive in the wild much beyond this century's end.
Others are less gloomy. Under pressure from wildlife groups, most
nations have at least removed their crocodilians from the vermin category.
Some are actually coming to value those crocs they have left.
Scientists, too, have begun to look carefully at crocodilians. This is
difficult. Crocs live in isolated, unpleasant places. They disappear at the
wink of a wading stork's eye. And they spend most of their time doing
nothing. But when they do act, they are magnificent and, we are learning,
deeply interesting.
Crocodiles survived while their close kin, the dinosaurs, died out. Croc
brains are far more complex than those of other reptiles. They learn readily.
Crocodile hearts are almost as advanced as those of birds and mammals.
In fact, their closest living relatives are the warm-blooded birds. Many
crocodilians even gather brush to build nests, as birds do.
Full-grown crocodilians range in size from one metre to more than
eight, from a few kilogrammes to more than a tonne. We can only guess
how long they live some for perhaps a hundred years or more.
A few species prefer solitary lives, but most, we now know, have sophisticated social orders. Their grunts, hisses, chirps, and growls each carry
specific messages. They also use a "body language" of back arching, bubble
blowing, and other physical displays. Crocs may communicate underwater,
too, through low-frequency warblings inaudible to us.
A big Nile croc is cunning enough to stalk a human, strong enough to
bring down and dismember a water buffalo, yet gentle enough to crack
open its own eggs to release its young.
|
