THE NILE CROCODILE
(Crocodilus niloticus)
TO the ancient Egyptians the timsa, or Nile crocodile, the champsa of Herodotus, was a familiar reptile; but from the lower and middle portion of the Nile, as far up as Thebes, the species has long since been exterminated, although it is still abundant in East and South Africa. Elsewhere it occurs in Madagascar, and still survives, although sparingly, in Syria, more especially in the Zerka (= Crocodile) River near Cæsarea. In Biblical times crocodiles were, however, abundant in the Holy Land; and there is little doubt that the “leviathan” of the Book of Job refers to these noisome reptiles. Till nearly the fifteenth century it also seems that crocodiles lived in Greece and the Isles of the Grecian Archipelago; and at that date a huge crocodile’s skull was jealously preserved and exhibited at Rhodes. It is these ancient south European crocodiles which probably gave rise to the legend of St. George and the Dragon and other myths of a kindred nature.
In popular estimation there is much confusion between crocodiles and alligators; and in India the former are almost invariably called alligators, although there is not a single representative of that group in the whole country. Indeed, alligators are confined to China and America; those of South America, properly known as caimans, differing from the typical Mississippi species by having a bony armour on the under as well as on the upper surface. There are many characters distinguishing crocodiles from alligators; one of the most easily recognised being that the fourth lower tooth of a crocodile bites into a notch on the outer side of the upper jaw, so that its summit is visible when the mouth is closed, whereas in an alligator the corresponding tooth is received into a pit, so that the tip is completely concealed when the reptile shuts its enormous mouth.
True crocodiles, which, with alligators, caimans, and gavials, are the largest of living reptiles, are now represented by about eleven species, whose combined range includes Africa, southern Asia, northern Australia, and tropical America. India possesses two species, the broad-nosed muggar (Crocodilus palustris), and the narrow-nosed estuarine crocodile (C. porosus); the former of which ranges to Ceylon, Burma, and the Malay Peninsula and Islands, while the latter, which enters salt-water freely, and is sometimes found far out to sea, extends from India, Ceylon, and the south of China to northern Australia and the Solomon and Fiji Islands.
crocodile
Crocodiles may grow to a length of 18 and probably 20 feet or more, and are powerful creatures, which are the pests of the waters they frequent, seizingand dragging down women and men who come to draw water, and gripping by the nose cattle and other animals which come to drink. A beast thus seized has little chance of escape, no matter what may be its size, as it is taken at a disadvantage and rendered comparatively helpless; but there is a well-authenticated story of a Nile crocodile seizing a rhinoceros by one of the hind-legs just as it was about to leave the river, and eventually dragging the enormous beast, despite its frantic efforts, backwards into deep water, where it was drowned.
The prey is, indeed, always killed by drowning, after which the carcase is dragged ashore and concealed among reeds or other covert, where it is left until decomposition has set in before being devoured. A large proportion of the food of the Nile crocodile is stated, however, to consist of fish; and snails, water-fowl, and carrion are also devoured by these ravenous reptiles. When in repose, crocodiles lie like logs in the water, or on the neighbouring sand and mud banks, but the slightest sound awakens them to activity.
Hearing seems indeed to be the sense most strongly developed in crocodiles; and it is upon this that they depend in ascertaining the presence of prey. Smell, touch, and taste appear to be but poorly developed; and the tongue is affixed to the lower surface of the mouth throughout its entire length. Crocodiles are furnished with glands secreting a musky substance, much esteemed by the Sudanis for anointing their hair and bodies, and thus producing what is to them, no doubt, an agreeable odour.
All crocodiles lay hard-shelled, oval eggs, about the size of those of a goose. These are deposited by the female, to the number of from about twenty to ninety, a yard or so deep in the sand of the river-bank, where they are carefully covered up by means of her tail, and then left to mature by the action of the sun’s rays. The mother appears, however, to keep watch in the neighbourhood of the nest, and when the eggs are ready to hatch, their occupants utter a peculiar sound which attracts the parent to their assistance.