Excellent Crocodile Viewing
Crocodiles feeding in Chobe National Park
It is possible to rent a guided boat tour of the river. These pictures of Crocodiles feeding on a dead Cape Buffalo were taken in Chobe National Park in Boswana. Crocodiles can grow over 4 meters long. They have been known to snap whole canoes in half, and are one of the leading killers in Africa. The Cape Buffalo probably drowned during the river crossing, and was left to rot. Crocodiles have no molars, so they cannot chew food, only swallowing. For this reason, they prefer to eat meat after it has rotted a little bit. Often crocodiles will store their kills in underwater obstructions to let them “soften” before they try to eat them.
The Nile crocodile is the top predator in its environment, and is responsible for checking the population of species like the barbel catfish, a predator that can overeat fish populations that other species, like birds, depend on. The Nile crocodile also consumes dead animals that would otherwise pollute the waters. The primary threat to Nile crocodiles, in turn, are humans. While illegal poaching is no longer a problem, they are threatened by pollution, hunting, and accidental entanglement in fishing nets.
From Wikipedia : Much of the hunting stems from their reputation as a man-eater, which is not entirely unjustified. Unlike other “man-eating” crocodiles, like the salties, the Nile crocodile lives in close proximity to human populations, so contact is more frequent. While there are no solid numbers, the Nile crocodile probably kills a couple of hundred people a year, which is more than all the other crocodiles combined. Some estimates put the number of annual victims in the thousands.
The density of crocodiles is quite high in this region of the world. Some counts indicate concentrations as high as 100 crocodiles per 1 km in the nearby Zambezi river. At times hunted for their beautiful skin, Chobe National Park serves as an excellent sanctuary for one of the world’s oldest reptiles.
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- Crocodiles feeding in Chobe National Park