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 look. 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 strict 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 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.