Weird Science Factoid Special: Crocodiles
Crocodiles are old. VERY old.
They hung out with dinosaurs 200 million years ago and have come through many of the big extinctions which blight our planet from time to time.
Crocs are great survivors - they have mastered the riverways as THE big carnivore.
They can go under water for an hour, live for a month without food, have a limb severed and won't get an infection from the wound, live in saltwater and freshwater, and eat just about everything.
Here are some weird facts about our scaly predator:
The largest crocodile species is the saltwater crocodile, encountered from India to northern Australia and Fiji. In can reach 23ft in length and one tonne in weight!
To "cry crocodile tears" is a common expression which is used for depicting fake sadness. But crocodiles really do wipe while feasting. Their eyes can froth and bubble during the feeding as air is pushed through the sinuses mixes with liquid in the animal's tear glands.
Many times crocodiles stay on the river banks mouth wide open. This is a way to cool off as they sweat through the mouth, panting like a dog!
Crocodiles can swim at 25 mph, and can stand underwater for up to three hours. On land they can reach 28mph, but, luckily for us, they get tired very quickly.
Saltwater crocodiles kill an estimated 2,000 people per year.
The back feet of crocodiles are webbed. But I wouldn't call them inbreds.
While they have big teeth, crocs don't chew. They swallow their food which is then broken down in their stomachs thanks to rocks they swallowed earlier.
Some ancient crocodiles lived mainly out of the water and were actually vegetarian.
But the king of the crocs was the Sarcosuchus, which attained sizes of about 40ft long and 8 tonnes - about the length of a bus and the weight of a small whale. He had no problems taking down even the biggest dinosaur.
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Daniel Smith - a long time ago, in a galaxy far away just north of Watford, Daniel fancied himself as a scientist but turned out to be the worst scientist since that bloke who mapped out all those canals on Mars that turned out to be scratches on his telescope's lens. Luckily, he is now not working on the Large Hadron Collider inadvertently creating a black hole that would swallow the world but is safely behind a desk writing this blog, bringing you the fantastical underbelly of nature... weird science.
I am terrified looking at this specie. I don't even want to imagine myself holding a crocodile or any from their families. Crocodiles are ambush hunters, waiting for fish or land animals to come close, then rushing out to attack. So scary! PFGBest
I am really very scared of crocodiles. Once I went on some weekend trip with my friends and it was really a terrible experience as we had to face many crocodiles in forest @ accounting firms