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March 19, 2007

The Reptile Rollover: The Crocodile Death Roll

Nile Crocodile (Crocodylus Niloticus) Masai Mara Reserve, Kenya

There's this great old horror movie called Attack of the Giant Leeches (1959). This movie is absolutely terrible, but the leeches (you can see the costume zippers) make a cool clucking noise and the locals keep blaming the swamp gators for killing everyone. I think this is the first time I ever heard of the "death roll" that a gator or croc could do to subdue it's prey.

Basically, after catching its meal, the gator or croc starts rolling under the water to disorient and drown its prey. This allows a croc or gator to feast on large animals at its own pace and they may even store the kill for later consumption if its really big. It's quite amazing to watch. The late Steve Irwin was quick to say, "The crocodile death roll is potentially the most powerful killing mechanism on earth." You can see the step by step process of a crocodile death roll experiment at Brilliant Creatures.

We were watching Nature on PBS the other night, and they had this great piece on Yala National Park in island nation of Sri Lanka. BBC was there to study the leopards, since the park has the highest concentration in the world, but it was this night footage of a leopard kill being taken over by crocodiles that really caught our attention.

The setup: A leopard kills a large boar. Night falls and the leopard returns to eat. The scent of death attracts other predators and soon the leopard encounters a large croc, but the leopard doesn't give up the kill. She bickers with the larger croc, staying out of its jaws but trying to get the corpse away. Soon, two other young leopards show up, and they also eat what they can, but the crocodile is not going to give up. Soon the kill is surrounded by crocodiles and the cats are forced out. Now about a dozen large crocodiles swarm on the dead pig. This all takes place on land in the dry season.

At which point, we noted a couple of things. While the leopards yanked and dragged the corpse along, the crocs throw it around like a toy. The heavy body is flung amongst them effortlessly. Each powerful croc, fanned around the kill like rays of the sun, grabs a bite of the pig and begins to...

You guessed it! These huge crocs all started spinning in the death roll on land. It very effectively twisted a piece of the meat off, so they could swallow it whole before the pig is completely devoured by the other crocs. The crocs even used each other to hold the kill down so they could twist their portion off without flipping the pig over at the same time. According to Wikipedia, nile crocs like the one pictured above will even wedge their prey into something stationary in order to hold the kill still before they roll.

What a fascinating gruesome scene!

Posted by sorsha at March 19, 2007 9:45 PM