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Is Jaguar capable of killing big crocodiles ?
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 (07-23-2020, 07:06 PM)Shadow Wrote: What I find interesting is, that (at least some) lions flip crocodiles over and then use throat bite.If this crocodile "was measured at 13,6 foot", then this guy must be a Bigfoot:  *This image is copyright of its original author Assuming the boot is about 11.5 cm wide, the lower jaw of this crocodile will be about 50 cm long, and its total length will be about 3.1 meters (and even for this length it looks very thin, with a rib cage narrower than the length of a human foot):  *This image is copyright of its original author Visual estimates of the length of crocodiles are rarely accurate. We have no evidence that he measured this crocodile with a measuring ruler according to all the rules of measurement, and did not measure its length in steps or something else. At least I strongly doubt this "measurement" based on what I see. You may have a different opinion, but I must also say that only a few crocodiles from Lake Kariba grow up to 4 meters in length. The largest animals measured in this region were up to 4.45 meters long, and the average asymptotic size of males is 4.15 meters (Moreau, 1997):  *This image is copyright of its original author https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/43542972.pdf The 4-meter 30+ year old Nile crocodile is truly huge animals that visually should dwarf two young male lions... As you can see from the visual comparison above. Such a crocodile is not as heavy (it is unlikely to weigh more than 300 kg) as visually large compared to young lions. Crocodiles always look very large animals, which has given rise to many myths about 8-meter Nile or saltwater crocodiles that "were twice as long as my four-meter boat". Crocodiles also appear to be very large animals in comparison with big cats, and their massive armored back makes them look significantly heavier than they are. Valmik Thapar visually estimated the mugger attacked by Machli at 14 feet in the documentary, and now this estimate is published everywhere. Even when he used a graphically confirmed 12-foot estimate in a National Geographic article in 2016, he said that "the crocodile was twice as large as the tigress." However, 260 kg (assuming Machli weighed about 130 kg) is the weight of a wild crocodile more than 4 meters long, while crocodiles about 3.5 meters long weigh from 150 kg to no more than 200 kg if they are not obese. Let's be honest, we don't have any solid evidence of lions or tigers kill crocodiles over 12 feet long. Of course, this is possible under certain conditions, I know of a report of a clan of hyenas killing a large Nile crocodile shortly before the end of a serve drought. The crocodile was without water for a long time and could not protect itself due to overheating and dehydration, much like wandering hippos, which lions often attack in similar situations. However, something like this has not yet been documented. Another story is the jaguar and the black caiman, as I know of two reports of jaguars (which is much smaller than lions and tigers) killing relatively large black caimans from the scientific literature. But caimans are not crocodiles. I would prefer to discuss this separately, because alligatoroids and crocodyloids are quite distant relatives (they evolutionarily diverged about 83.5 million years ago) and have many differences in anatomy, physiology and behavior. (07-23-2020, 04:43 PM)Shadow Wrote: When a big cat like a tiger or a lion (or a jaguar) is on the back of a crocodile, what can it do? Tail is useless and so are teeth, it´s practically helpless unless able to walk into the water despite having a big cat on it´s back biting and clawing. It's not entirely clear to me why you think crocodiles are helpless when attacked from the back, as we have many videos showing that this is not the case. Jumping on the back of even a 2-meter crocodile will be suicidal for any crocodile catcher, if the crocodile is full of strength and not limited by ropes. Crocodiles have very flexible spines, and they can attack upward after turning on their side, as in this video and photos:  *This image is copyright of its original author  *This image is copyright of its original author Another way for crocodiles to free themselves is to make a "death roll", which seems to be a reflexive response to the grappling. It is not useless, since the bellies of crocodiles are not at all soft, and the throat of a really big croc is probably too wide for the jaws of any big cat. After all, it seems like crocodiles regularly steal prey from big cats on land and are quite effective kleptoparasites, much like bears. This behavior has been described for muggers, Nile crocodiles, Morelet's crocodiles and saltwater crocodiles. If crocodiles are so helpless on land, why can a lone Nile crocodile join the meal of a whole pride of lions without any fear? And crocodiles do it over and over again, since in many of the interactions between crocodiles and lions, captured on video, crocodiles feed on the carcasses of animals killed by lions, sometimes walking many hundreds of meters from water bodies for this. But your statement may well be more or less true of some of the more aquatic crocodilians, such as the Gangetic gharial or the black caiman. While true crocodiles have fairly strong limbs with differentiated locomotor muscles, these more aquatic crocodilians have surprisingly small limbs with limited mobility. Interestingly, no one has ever heard of a black caiman trying to steal prey from a jaguar what was recorded even for the smaller Morelet's crocodile (interestingly, the crocodile presumably arrived in response to the jaguar's vocalization, indicating some experience, perhaps instinctive, in getting food from the jaguars). (07-23-2020, 04:43 PM)Shadow Wrote: Still when looking at known cases, numbers are overwhelming and not in favor of crocodiles.Are you making this claim based on any statistics you have personally collected, or is it a subjective impression based on reading the published accounts? As far as I can tell from what I have seen, this is not the case. There have already been attempts to collect observations with aggressive interactions between crocodiles and big cats and analyze their interactions, in which I also participated as one of the people who conducted keyword searches on youtube and facebook. This is the final result of this work: Full dataset: https://drive.google.com/drive/u/1/folde...5iYHNn5ysG Full dataset: https://drive.google.com/drive/u/1/folde...Gm91MzwQYB We have about the same number of accounts where crocodiles kill big cats and vice versa. You may disagree with this, but it would be better if you can confirm your opinion with some of your own statistics… It is not surprising that accounts where big cats kill crocodiles are more often photographed, since big cats are generally more often observed by tourist groups and their kill sites are much easier to find (crocodiles often hide their prey underwater). Despite this, the total number of accounts is still comparable. So far, there is no data collected on leopards and jaguars, but the former, as far as I can tell, are quite often killed by crocodiles because of their smaller size compared to lions and tigers, and the latter very rarely interact with true crocodiles. Most sightings of lions killing crocodiles come from the shores of Lake Kariba and most crocodiles killed by lions are from 2 to 3 meters long. Lake Kariba is an artificial reservoir that is overpopulated with crocodiles, and it is not surprising that some lions (such as Bumi lions) have developed the habit of opportunistically hunting crocodiles, which are forced out of the lake by more dominant individuals. Lions kill hyenas, leopards and African wild dogs, it is not surprising that they can kill and kill crocodiles of the same size. On the other hand, how many crocodiles at least 3.5 meters long (a crocodile of this length is comparable in weight to an adult male lion) were killed by lions or tigers? Such observations can be counted on the fingers of one hand, while there are many fairly reliable cases of crocodiles killing adult lions and (mostly historically) tigers. (07-23-2020, 04:43 PM)Shadow Wrote: Then there are at least two filmed cases, in which crocodiles have managed to take a male lion under surface in the river. What is interesting is, that in both cases crocodiles failed to kill and also in both cases lions got out of the water unharmed. Even though some people mention so eagerly how powerful bite crocodiles have... obviously it isn´t that powerful, that they could kill big animals just like that. It´s naturally just common sense to understand, that crocodiles don´t have so strong bite, when looking at frontal part of their jaws. Be sure that not only the really big crocs go after swimming big cats. In all cases where lions survived attacks of crocodiles in the water, crocodiles were hardly larger than lions. I saw only one video in which a really large crocodile (about 4.5 meters long) was chasing a young male lion, but the lion dodged the attack on the shore and ran away. It is not surprising that it is difficult for one predator to kill another predator of similar size, especially such a dexterous predator as a big cat, which can easily avoid a bone-crushing bite due to its flexibility (note that crocodiles do not ambush swimming big cats, but actively pursue them, and in such cases they lose the element of surprise). The skins of carnivorous mammals are very durable, it is not surprising that a big cat can avoid serious injury if the crocodile does not get a good grip, despite the really strong bite of crocs even at the tip of the jaws (Erickson et al., 2012). Haven't you seen how much effort it takes for a large clan of hyenas to injure a lone lioness? It's no less common to see crocodiles fighting off groups of lions on land, and there is a report where a leopard failed to kill a similarly-sized mugger crocodile after an hour and a half of fighting. It took the tigress Machli 13 hours to kill the drought-weakened 12-foot mugger, while almost any other animal under 200 kg in weight would be killed in a few minutes after a good grip on the neck. Crocodiles (not yacare/spectacled caimans, with their relatively small skulls and slender necks that fit easily into the jaguar's mouth) are also very tough and difficult to kill. |
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