Cuban Crocodiles – Part 2

Answering some common questions that we get asked about our crocodiles…

Are the crocodiles real?

I can assure you that all of our crocodiles are real. Crocodiles are typically seen as sit-and-wait predators but do also actively hunt for their food. Most of the time, you’ll see crocodiles sitting around, warming themselves up, catching some UV rays or floating around in the pool, generally not doing a lot. But during feeding times and when they are given enrichment to explore, you will see them move about and interact with each other or things in their enclosure.

Do the crocodiles eat the fish?

When we first introduced the fish to our crocodile pools, we watched the crocodiles try several different methods to try and catch them. They quickly figured out that the fish were too fast and weren’t worth the effort, so we very rarely see any hunting behaviours from our crocodiles with the fish.

How does Rico get onto the shelf?

Short answer: We don’t exactly know. Longer answer: Cuban crocodiles are pretty good at climbing, so we assume that Rico climbs onto the windowsill first, like a step, then climbs up onto his shelf. He is able to turn around on the shelf to get comfortable without falling off. To get down, he very ungracefully slides off of the edge and because his nose is longer than his arms, he usually lands on his face.

Can you go in with them?

We do not go into the enclosure with our Cuban crocodiles. We have trained our crocodiles to follow a target stick, and they will go into an area in their enclosure where we can shut them behind a big shutter door. This separates them from us, keeping us keepers safe while we clean their enclosure.

What do we feed the crocodiles?

Our Cuban crocodiles are fed rats. These are nice bitesize chunks and the crocodiles can benefit from all the nutritional goodness provided by the organs and bones. It also means that both of our crocodiles receive their fair share of food which we wouldn’t be able to do with larger food items.

How often do the crocodiles get fed?

We feed our crocodiles once a week. Crocodiles live a low-energy lifestyle and naturally go long periods between meals. Feeding crocodiles too much and/or too frequently can lead to overweight animals which would put pressure on their organs and lower their lifespan.

Some cool crocodile facts to end with:

Crocodiles have 4 main types of movement on land; a high walk, a belly run, bounding and a gallop. A high walk involves the crocodile lifting its whole body off the floor as they walk. A belly run involves the crocodile pushing themselves along the floor on their belly. Bounding is when the crocodiles’ front limbs hit the ground at the same time, shortly followed by their hindlimbs. A gallop is where they lift their whole body off of the floor and run with their forelimbs and hindlimbs hitting the ground at different times. Mostly, you’ll see our Cuban crocodiles do a high walk, but Cuban crocodiles are one of the few species of crocodile that is able to gallop.

No matter what movement is used by crocodiles they can reach an impressive speed of 11 miles per hour and galloping can boost their speed to between 15-22 miles per hour. Could you outrun our Cuban crocodiles at their top speed?

Their nostrils sit on a nasal disk which is also referred to as a ‘button’. When you look at our crocodiles you will be able to see this as it just looks like their nostrils are on a raised circular lump at the end of their snout.

There has been evidence to suggest that crocodiles can play. This means crocodiles have interacted with objects without a specific purpose and just simply because they can.

Crocodile teeth don’t have roots and they will continuously replace their teeth throughout their life (the fancy word for this is ‘polyphyodont’). It is estimated that a 13ft Nile Crocodile would replace each tooth 45-50 times during its life. Young crocodiles will replace their teeth a lot more frequently but the older the crocodile gets, the slower the tooth replacement.

When we clean our crocodile enclosures or their filters, we find multiple teeth of various sizes. These find their home with our education team so you can have the chance of seeing them during their school talks or when they set up ‘touch tables’ during the holidays.  

A medium sized crocodile tooth retrieved from one of our enclosures.

Crocodiles have wide-angle vision and are also thought to have excellent depth perception. Even though crocodiles are built for hunting in water, their vision underwater is poor and they are able to focus better on land. Crocodiles have shown to be able to track objects above the water if the water is clear, so although their sight in water isn’t great, it is still useful to them.

Crocodiles have something called integumentary sensory organs (ISOs). These make up for the crocodiles lack of vision in the water as these organs are able to detect water vibrations and ripples and help crocodiles figure out when to bite hold of their prey. These ISOs are more sensitive than the fingertips of primates and they can be found mostly on the crocodiles’ jaw, but also on their bodies.

You can see Ricos ISOs along his lower and upper jaw. A similar look to when we get goosebumps.