There are worse things than 35ft crocodiles
PAUL JOHNSON Iadmire the late Steve Irwin, the Australian crocodilaphile who, corning from nowhere, contrived to make £2 million a year sporting with these ugly, dangerous and tremendous beasts, and was then killed by a miserable stingray. I say 'ugly' but that is a matter of opinion. I love drawing them more than any other creature except a rhino. Humanity has a long and mysterious history of crocodile-fancying. In Central America, in the region known as the Gran Ching-ui, Indian tribes in the deep pre-Columbian era seem to have worshipped them. They figure prominently in pottery as stands, handles, beaker-mouths and entire vessels. There is a whole range of ware known as the Alligator Group. No accounting for tastes, eh? It may be that crocs have been worshipped, as in ancient Egypt, for their size and power. Significantly, the first ruler to treat them as gods was a woman, Queen Sebeknofru. She called a town after them, Crocodilonopolis (modern Medinet elFayyum). This is one of only two Pharaonic places called after animals, the other being Elephantopolis, much further up the Nile. This got its name from the trading place where Sudanese and equatorial Africans brought their ivory tusks to swap for spices, scents, medicines and precious metals. It may be that croc-town was an emporium of the leather trade, the skins, then as now, fetching high prices for purses, pouches and shoes.
Cleopatra also liked crocodiles, which may account for the mysterious passage in the play where Lefridus cross-questions Antony about them and is answered with deadpan nonsense — Shakespeare in his proto-Stoppard vein: Lefridus: What manner o' thing is your crocodile?
Antony: It is shaped, sir, like itself, and it is as broad as it has breadth; it is just so high as it is, and moves with its own organs; it lives by that which nourisheth it, and the elements once out of it, it transmigrates.
Plutarch had his own explanation of why the Egyptians worshipped crocs, 'because it is the only animal without a tongue, like the Diving Logos, which standeth not in need of speech'. He adds that it is also unique in that its eyes are covered with a thin, transparent membrane. Because of this gift, it is Godlike, and can see without being seen — God sees all but is invisible.
Plutarch certainly put his finger on the fact that crocs, despite their apparent clumsiness on land (water is their true element), are well equipped to survive. Indeed, though they came into existence during the dinosaur age, they are by far the largest of the species to survive it. The estuarial crocodile, the kind Cleopatra would have observed in the Nile Delta, and Queen Sebek a thousand miles up the river, can grow to be 35 feet long, from its snout to the tip of its magnificent tail. This appendage has some of the strongest muscles known to nature, which it uses like a vast engine to drive itself at speed under the water. If it wants concealment while searching for prey, it can keep just a bit of its head above the water. Here is another gift of nature: all of its sensory organs are concentrated in this small bit of head, so it can see and hear and sense food and enemies while concealing nearly all of its body.
Nor is this all. I find that the hardest part of the croc to draw is its eyes, and this is important because a drawing of a creature does not come to life until you put in its eyes accurately and luminously. The croc masks its eyes but they are superb organs all the same: its nictitating membrane over the eyeballs is at right angles to the eyelids, giving in effect perfect vision in all conditions. The tail muscles allow it to swim noiselessly and without giveaway ripples at top speed, and thanks to its huge lungs it can stay under water for long periods. It also uses the tail to thrash water to mark its territory and scare rivals, accompanying the tumult with a strange bellowing, very scary.
It begins by eating insects and progresses to animals of virtually any size. Its vast number of teeth arranged at difficult angles and sizes make it a formidable snapping and chewing machine, better than a shark, and it knows the underwater hollows of the estuaries and riverbanks well, using them as food-storage tanks, where bodies can be placed until they rot and become soft and delectable. The crocodile is well armoured, even more ingeniously than the rhino. It has a unique heart-system of four separate chambers, to keep distinct its two kinds of blood, veins and arterial. Altogether, while being itself highly efficient at killing, it is extremely hard to kill, and can survive the most determined and ferocious attacks by humans. Everything about a croc is efficient. It copulates under water and takes exactly ten minutes, which oddly enough is the time it took Napoleon Bonaparte.
The phenomenon of 'crocodile tears', though misconceived, has a long history. It was particularly dear to the Elizabethans for, as Raleigh said, deception and dissimulation were the keys to survival at the Tudor court, and a man, like the croc, often had to pretend to display the opposite of his true intentions. Francis Bacon, in his essay 'On Wisdom', gives them high praise, 'that shed tears when they would devour'. Shakespeare, too, commends 'the mournful crocodile with sorrow-snares'. Edmund Spenser, too, writes of 'a cruel crafty crocodile,/ Which in false grief hiding his harmful guile,/ Doth keep full sore, and sheddeth tender tears.'
Crocodiles were also said to compound their deceit by moaning. But the truth is that the tears are produced by mouth glands, which are activated while feeding. Not that crocs are incapable of deception, quite the contrary; their ability to hide all or most of their body before an attack is outstanding and beats all the big cats of the jungle, and some species have elaborate camouflage capacities. The Black Caiman of South America, for instance, can change its body colour at high speed. Of all the reptilian survivors from the dinosaur age, the croc has by far the best brain. They are not only deceptive but curious, and when suitably petted and fed can be tamed, taught to recognise people, beg for food and attack intruders. They are now farmed on a large scale. But this indicates that they can be deceived in turn. For instance, if you go near a croc and blow a trumpet loudly, the creature will think it is another croc and respond in kind. It tenses all the muscles, so that its head and tail rise high out of the water, then roars, vibrating its flanks so violently that spray rises 20 feet into the air. Jet aircraft can have the same effect. But I don't recommend annoying crocs with musical instruments. When they realise they've been had, they turn nasty.
Indeed, though crocs kill many fewer Africans, for instance, than the harmlessseeming hippo, they have chalked up notable victims. One of them was gobbled in 1960, in the chaos that followed the 'liberation' of the Congo from colonial rule. It was the German ambassador who had foolishly ventured to trot along the banks of the river, and was snatched, sola topi, lederhosen and all, by a 30-footer which dragged him to its underwater fridge until he was nice and tender, then enjoyed a Lucullan feast. The Congolese chortled, but gradually realised they had exchanged harsh white rule for far more deadly misrule by their own kind. Since then more than five million have been murdered. 'There are worse things than crocs' is now a favourite proverb.
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