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Crocodiles are ambush predators, waiting for fish or land animals to come close, then rushing out to attack. Crocodiles mostly eat fish, amphibians, crustaceans, molluscs, birds, reptiles, and mammals, and they occasionally cannibalize smaller crocodiles. What a crocodile eats varies greatly with species, size and age.
Lake Turkana in Kenya has one of the largest undisturbed Nile crocodile populations. Generally, the adult male Nile crocodile is between 3.5 and 5 m (11 ft 6 in and 16 ft 5 in) in length and weighs 225 to 750 kg (496 to 1,653 lb). However, specimens exceeding 6.1 m (20 ft) in length and 1,000 kg (2,200 lb) in weight have been recorded.
Three extant crocodilian species clockwise from top-left: saltwater crocodile (Crocodylus porosus), American alligator (Alligator mississippiensis), and gharial (Gavialis gangeticus) Crocodilia is an order of mostly large, predatory , semiaquatic reptiles , which includes true crocodiles , the alligators , and caimans ; as well as the gharial ...
Growth in hatchlings and young crocodilians depends on the food supply. Animals reach sexual maturity at a certain length, regardless of age. Saltwater crocodiles reach maturity at 2.2–2.5 m (7–8 ft) for females and 3 m (10 ft) for males. Australian freshwater crocodiles take ten years to reach maturity at 1.4 m (4 ft 7 in).
The American crocodile (Crocodylus acutus) is a species of crocodilian found in the Neotropics.It is the most widespread of the four extant species of crocodiles from the Americas, with populations present from South Florida, the Caribbean islands of Cuba, Jamaica, Hispaniola, [4] and the coasts of Mexico to as far south as Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, and Venezuela.
A Brazilian scientist has identified fossils of a small crocodile-like reptile that lived during the Triassic Period several million years before the first dinosaurs. The fossils of the predator ...
But dinosaur brain cases more closely resemble those of modern-day reptiles like crocodiles, Caspar said. For animals like crocodiles, brain matter occupies only 30% to 50% of the brain cavity.
Reptiles, from Nouveau Larousse Illustré, 1897–1904, notice the inclusion of amphibians (below the crocodiles). In the 13th century, the category of reptile was recognized in Europe as consisting of a miscellany of egg-laying creatures, including "snakes, various fantastic monsters, lizards, assorted amphibians, and worms", as recorded by Beauvais in his Mirror of Nature. [7]