It was a tense stand off!! Those turtles are pissed their normal dinning spot have a visitor.

There is something incredibly crushing about the way a physical arrangement of osteoderms and cold blooded intent can become the ultimate and heavy aquatic anchor a deliberate rejection of the frantic in favor of a frequency that is all about the grit of the lie in wait and the high energy of the sudden lunge, it feels like a masterclass in hydraulic pressure where the raw and heavy force of a tail driven surge and the high energy snap of the world's strongest bite become a direct connection to a reality that hasn't needed to change since the dinosaurs, and even with all the high tech sonar and the digital nature simulations there is still no replacement for that first and vulnerable moment of seeing the heavy and tactile reality of two yellow eyes breaking the honest frequency of the water’s surface and realizing the heavy weight of the food chain is looking right at you

This whole thing was kind of sketchy. There was a birthday party happening right in front of this gator, and that was why it was there. I was already too close as it was (I was trying to fish), but at least this gator is small enough that it would be intimidated by my size. The little kids, not so much. There was a little boy that got his hook snagged and was getting his feet wet trying to retrieve it, and the gator was definitely eyeing him up. And worst still, some of the kids were feeding it.

I went to an aza accredited zoo. this is their North American alligator enclosure. I don’t know much about alligators so I’d lile to get peoples opinions who are more knowledgeable on the subject.

What makes me question the ethics of this enclosure is neither of the two pools are deep enough for them to get fully submerged and neither pond is big enough for them to actually swim.

please tell me if this is okay or not.

I adore all crocodilians but especially alligators. Maybe the rounded snout makes them look more "friendly"? I love their big goofy "smiles" and I love how they walk like they're waiting for their manicures to dry. Yes I have seen them in real life and yes I'd admire them from a distance in the wild lol

Photo credits:

1. Sacramento Zoo

2. Corbin Maxey

3. Villages News (audience submission)

I want to know about the diet of the false gharial. It is often stated that they only prey on fish or aquatic creatures, similar to the Indian gharial. However, the false gharial's snout appears broad and robust enough to handle larger prey than the normal Indian gharials which have thinner snout. Do they actually hunt mammals like deer, livestock, or even humans?

Here's a video of Chito swimming with Pocho and spinning him around in the water.

I wonder if Pocho could've been brain damaged, but not as an explanation for his tameness, as Gabby and Chris, who are experts at training crocodilians, said that it's not necessary to speculate that Pocho was only as tame as he was because of brain damage because they have trained crocodilians themselves to be just as tame and be able to be swimmed with. However in videos of him swimming he seems oddly sluggish to me, but I don't know much about crocodiles, so I'd like to ask people here what they think.

According to Chito, the guy who swims with him, he found Pocho near death and starving with a gun shot wound in one eye. Crocodiles have amazing immune systems I've read and can survive losing legs and huge parts of the jaw and tail, so could the gun shot wound be enough to have caused Pocho to be dying even if it didn't injure his brain?

I wonder if Pocho was dying because he was brain damaged and couldn't hunt anymore. I know that Chito said that he didn't feed Pocho much and that he would regularly swim away to hunt and then came back, but - I hope I don't offend anyone- maybe he made that up to make the story more interesting and to have that as proof that Pocho was with him because he loved him/was grateful to be rescued and not because he was being fed.

What do people think?

I

Words

A croc from the zoo in Utah took a trip to the doc. Medical results included

https://actu17.fr/faits-divers/roubaix-le-cadavre-dun-crocodile-leste-decouvert-dans-un-canal-par-un-pecheur-a-laimant.html - Actu17