Where are crocodiles born?

A newly-hatched crocodile is about eight inches long and can be found on the mud near the water’s edge of marshes, rivers, estuaries and lakes around the tropical regions of the world. For it is here that the female lays her eggs and buried them-to 70 at a time-in holes in the warm mud.

Each of the hard-shelled eggs is about the size of a goose’s egg. After being covered by vegetation which as it rots, supplements the warmth of the sun, the batch is guarded by the female until the eggs are about to hutch. Then the crocodile digs down to free them from the mud.

Adult crocodiles vary in size from the three feet long dwarf once of West Africa to those in the estuaries of tropical Asia and Australia which can attain a length of 20 feet.

These salt-water estuary crocodiles, including those that live in the tidal part of the River Nile in North Africa, are occasionally maneaters and will attack and eat almost any living creature that comes within their reach. They were once thought to weep as they snapped up their victim. That is why in popular speech we often describe a false display of sorrow as crocodile tears.