update two of two

Sorry, I didn't have my camera for this one. We got to feed the Nile Crocodiles on Friday. Not just prepare their raw chicken and fish, but actually throw it at them from a safe distance. So now I can say I actually did get to feed the animals at Disney World.

First, a little background info. There are 27 Nile Crocodiles at the Animal Kingdom. They're all males and they're all in the same exhibit on the Kilamanjaro Safari ride. The exhibit also contains some small fish that breed and that the crocs munch on every once in a while, along with the occasional vulture or local egret. There's a trick bridge that goes past the crocs' open exhibit that kinda rotates and makes you think you're going to fall into the croc pond when you're riding in the Safari truck. It's maybe six to eight feet above the surface of the water and there's a fence under the bridge so the crocs can only hang out on one side. It was from this bridge that we fed the crocs.

We started off around 7 AM with several large containers of about 320 pounds total of raw chicken halves and tilapia. When someone threw the first chicken, all the sleepy-looking crocs slinked into the water to grab what they could. I was hoping they would catch the fish in their mouths like a dog would catch a hot dog, but they usually just grabbed it after it landed. There was a lot less aggression in the exhibit than you'd expect with 27 male crocs, but the croc keeper said that's because there are no females for them to impress. You'd see two crocs going for the same chicken and whoever got there first was the winner; there just weren't any fights. (Once again, I'm sorry I don't have any pictures!)

The crocs liked the chicken better than the fish, of course. They have good taste. They even left some of the fish at the bottom of the shallow pool to look for more chicken, and you could see some of the small (living) fish feeding on it. After the feeding "frenzy" (it wasn't really a frenzy) was over, some of the more dominant crocs started looking around for the scraps that everyone left behind. The little fish swam away when the crocs came to grab the leftover tilapia from the shallows.

Crocs have great eyesight, and although they're not terribly agile, they are quite fast. Crocs have the same magnetic-sensory thing that sharks have in their heads that allows them to find their prey, but the awesome difference between crocs and sharks in this respect is that the croc has this sense all over his body--it's not restricted to his head. Crocs are also omnivores. Surprising, right? They've been known to eat fruit from low-hanging branches in the wild, and the crocs that we met love tomatoes. So this sort of made my morning. :)


I finally downloaded my pictures from the Lodge, so I'll post some of them soon, too!