Zimbago the wife-eater

Press, 11 October 1985, Page 12

Zimbago the wife-eater

By

NAYLOR HILLARY

Zimbago is a venerable old gentleman of 75. He lives alone now, in comfortable private accommodation, enjoying the sunshine and occasionally taking a dip in his pool. But Zimbago has a past. Once he had five wives, and in an angry moment he was known to eat a would-be partner who was offering him her favours.

He also ate two Shona tribesmen, in what was once Rhodesia, when floods came and rising water helped him to swim out of his enclosed home and into a nearby river.

Zimbago is a Nile crocodile, on show now at the Kango Crocodile Farm near Oudtshoorn, about 500 kilometres east of Cape Town in South Africa.

About four metres long and weighing 300 kg, he is not especially big as crocodiles grow, but his reputation — with wives and fishermen — makes him something of an attraction at the farm. He is also a well-travelled croc. After dining on the fishermen in Rhodesia he was recaptured and transferred by air 2000 kilometres south to his present home.

Even the dormant, wintering crocodiles need to be treated with respect at all times. There are few more efficient killing machines in the natural world.

And when the days warm up a crocodile can show amazing agility. On land, on stubby legs, it can move at 18 km/h. In the water its tail pushes its speed up to 25 km/h. On land it can jump more than a metre; in the water it can reach nearly two metres, again with the thrust of its tail.

The huge tail can knock an unwary animal off blance at the water’s edge. In the spring it is used to beat the water in mating displays that may go on for two days. Female crocodiles lay up to 80 eggs in a sandy excavation in the middle of summer. The eggs are

covered with sand and the spot camouflaged. Incubation in warm sand can take up to three months, with the female standing guard. So compacted is the sand that the new-born crocs, about 30cm long, cannot dig their way out. They croak for help, depending on their mother to hear them. She digs them out and carries them in her mouth to the nearest water.