Crocodile and Big cats Interaction

[TheSmok]

(10-18-2020, 07:57 PM)Shadow Wrote: As far as I remember, Bumi lions were called specialized crocodile killers by locals who observed these lions and they killed some big crocodiles, three were approximately 4 meters long, one was measured to be a bit over 4 meters.

It seems to be an observation made by one safari guide. These are articles from his blog:
https://safariguideafrica.wordpress.com/...crocodile/
https://safariguideafrica.wordpress.com/...umi-hills/
There is also a Facebook safari group that this guide worked for, which posted all of these sightings, including photographs of smaller crocodiles previously killed by lions: https://www.facebook.com/page/2089942957...=Crocodile
However, none of these sources have published an update to this observations since April 18, 2016. Therefore, it seems that this was only a temporary behavior of lions, at least we have no evidence to the contrary.

Regarding the size of the crocodiles, two out of three carcasses were photographed next to lions, and it is clear that they are less than 4 meters in length. They are quite similar in size to a young male lion.
The guide claimed he measured the third crocodile carcass at 13 feet 6 inches (~4.1 meters), although there is no way to reliably measure the gnawed and crumpled carcass, and it was most likely a rough approximation in steps or something like that. Judging by this photo, the length of the lower jaw of this crocodile is approximately 55 cm, since the width of the man's boot is hardly much more than 12 cm:

*This image is copyright of its original author

The length of the lower jaw of about 55 cm corresponds to the dorsal cranial length of the skull of hardly more than 43-45 cm, and such dorsal cranial length corresponds to the crocodile total length no more than 320 cm.
After all, it is also quite expected that many safari guides will exaggerate the size of the crocodiles in almost any context.

Another strange point is that at least two crocodile carcasses were found on the river bank. If one of them (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cbkpYukox-c, and here are photos - https://www.facebook.com/BumiHills/posts...8198478683) looks pretty old and decomposed, and may have been just scavenged, there is no reason to believe that the second one was also scavenged rather than killed (although the quality is poor, it is flipped on its back, looks fresher and is much more eaten, there are some photos - https://safariguideafrica.wordpress.com/...umi-hills/). It seems crocodiles can relatively easily avoid lions in a place like this, as can be seen in many videos like this:

But not in this case. Unfortunately, nobody saw the killing, and we don't know what really happened. Reply