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Interesting fact: Crocodiles digest their food in the heat/sun. So after big meals, they get out of the water and just sit in the sun. This crocodile was being monitored by drones and they realized it had been sitting in that position for 3+days. That’s how they figured…
Police pulled a crocodile out of a South African river last week and cut it open. Inside: a man’s ring, his remains, and six other pairs of shoes that didn’t belong to him. The man was Gabriel Batista, 59. He ran a small hotel and bar in eastern South Africa, near the Komati River.
On April 27, he tried to drive across a bridge that had flooded over. His truck got stuck. He was swept downstream and never seen alive again. For a week, police searched the river with drones and found nothing.
Then they spotted a single crocodile sitting on a small island, belly bulging, completely still while a helicopter buzzed overhead. Every other croc in the area slid into the water at the noise. This one didn’t move. That gave them their answer.
A police captain was lowered on a rope. They killed the crocodile, lifted it out by helicopter, and flew it about 3 miles to Kruger National Park to be cut open. Batista’s ring was inside. So were the six other pairs of shoes.
The crocodile was 15 feet long and weighed 1,100 pounds, about the size of a horse. Nile crocodiles like this one kill somewhere between 300 and 1,000 people every year in Africa. Around half of all attacks end in death. Your bite is about 150 pounds of pressure. A lion’s bite is 650.
A saltwater crocodile’s bite, the strongest ever measured in any living animal, is 3,700. That is enough to snap bone. Once those jaws close, the limb does not come back out. Then there is how they hunt. A crocodile resting underwater can hold its breath for two hours. Its heart slows to two or three beats a minute, basically off.
When it decides to move, it can swim at 18 miles an hour, faster than any human in any pool, ever. Picture a flooded river. The crocodile saw you the moment you went in. It picked the right second to move, and you never saw a ripple.
The Komati flows right next to Kruger National Park, in some of the most crocodile-heavy water on earth. The bridge Batista tried to cross is locally known to flood. December through March is the rainy season in this part of South Africa, when crocodiles breed and are most aggressive.
Batista went in during peak danger. The six pairs of shoes are still being tested. Police suspect at least some belong to other people the crocodile had eaten.
