Phone keeps ringing in croc's tummy

KIEV, Ukraine — Gena, a 14-year-old crocodile at an aquarium in the eastern city of Dnipropetrovsk, has been refusing food and acting listless after eating a cell phone dropped by a woman as she tried to photograph him.

Aquarium workers initially didn't believe Rimma Golovko, a new mother in her 20s, when she complained that the crocodile had swallowed her phone.

“But then the phone started ringing and the sound was coming from inside our Gena's stomach and we understood she wasn't lying,” said Alexandra, an employee.

The mishap has caused problems for the crocodile, which has not eaten or had a bowel movement in four weeks and appears depressed and in pain.

"The animal is not feeling well," said Alexandra. "His behavior has changed, he moves very little and swims much less than he used to."

Source

Religion can kill you!

A crocodile killed and devoured a 25-year-old man in Bangladesh who waded into a pond next to a shrine hoping to be blessed by the animal, police said on Thursday.

Rubel Sheikh and his mother travelled 30 miles from their home to visit the Muslim Khan Jahan Ali shrine, where the attack happened.

Hundreds of people visit the shrine every day to offer hens and goats to the five crocodiles living in the pond.

Part of the ritual also involves bathing in the water.

Source: Independent Online

Photo credit & more detail about the Khan Jahan Ali shrine: Crocodiles in Peril

Video: Hippos Like to Lick Crocs

(via Ugly Overload)

Cute or not? Baby crocodile

Can't decide? Here's another one . . .

Photo: Steve Winter (National Geographic)

Deaths of Rare Crocodile in India Stir Alarm

Three decades after it was brought back from the brink of extinction, the rare Indian crocodile known as the gharial is turning up dead by the dozens on the banks of a river called the Chambal. Forest officials are at a loss to explain why.

Since mid-December, the National Chambal Wildlife Sanctuary has confirmed 76 deaths along the river, which begins in the central Indian state of Madhya Pradesh and runs through Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh.

Other species that inhabit the Chambal River ecosystem, including dozens of fish species on which the gharials feed, appear to be healthy.

Sourge: NY Times

Photo: Tim Dwight(Wildldife Web)

American croc no longer listed as endangered

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has declassified the American crocodile as an endangered species, saying the animal has rebounded from the edge of extinction. The species has rebounded in the United States from just 300 in 1976 to an estimated 2,000 today.

The reptile remains protected under the federal Endangered Species Act even though it was downgraded to a "threatened" species, making it illegal to harass, poach or kill the reptiles.

"It's just one step closer to recovery, but it still has many, many threats," Fish and Wildlife Service spokesman Tom MacKenzie said in announcing the move Tuesday. "It's still protected with the full force of federal law."