New York Zoological Society. 
MAN-EATING NILE CROCODILE (Crocodylus niloticus). Length: 20 feet. Range: 
Africa, Syria and Madagascar. 
is from fourteen to sixteen feet, although record specimens have been 
known to attain twenty-five feet. It is fierce and powerful, dashing rapidly 
out of the water to seize a man or other victim on the riverbank. Throwing 
its victim down with a stunning snap of its powerful tail, it will drag it 
under water to drown. The body is then pulled to the crocodile’s den, and 
when the meat is somewhat softened by decomposition, the reptile sits 
down to dinner. The den is a thirty-five-foot passage, dug in the river- 
bank, with an underwater entrance leading to a dry compartment. The 
natives sometimes hunt the crocodile by blocking up the water hole and 
digging out the reptile from above. 
The Egyptian plover, a bird inhabitant of the tributaries and mud¬ 
flats of the Nile, has been surnamed the crocodile bird because of its idyllic 
association with the crocodile. As the reptile wallows in the river slime, its 
gums grow full of leeches. These the crocodile birds are said to pick 
from between its teeth, even entering the cavernous mouth on occasion. At 
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