How Crocodiles are Trained

Greymouth Evening Star, 24 March 1928, Page 9

How Crocodiles are Trained

There is no means of completely training crocodiles. The only way they can be made tractable is by constantly working with them. Even then they will forget one in a very short while. For instance, once I have set my animals at liberty in their enclosure at hom£ it would be very dangerous for me to approach them after they had been basking for a while in the sun, writes Captain Wall in “The Daily Mail.” It is only when their skins begin to crack with heat and they are forced to retire to more sheltered spots that they become at all amenable.

you are attacked by a crocodile the most effective defence is to hit the animal sharply on the nose, where it is extremely sensitive. A crocodile will often consume 501 b

of meat at one meal, although it is able to go without food for two or three months;. Its diet usually includes* the lungs aiid livery of horses and cattle, and sometimes fish. Being cannibals by nature, crocodiles will also consume their smaller, fry. . Crocodiles breed in the Northern hemisphere during June and July. The female lays roughly from 50 to 60 comparatively small white eggs ,at the rate of one a minute. After the eggs have been laid the mother buries them under a slight layer of sand; and foliage and leaves them there to incubate.

Crocodiles sometimes live to a very great age. There is a crocodile still living on a farm in the Southern States of America which is reputed'to be over 800 years old. 1 -