Crocodile and Big cats Interaction

[Shadow]

(10-19-2020, 11:01 AM)TheSmok Wrote:

(10-19-2020, 10:06 AM)Shadow Wrote: In my opinion in range which a lion knowing what to do can kill quite easily.

I, on the other hand, very much doubt that any lion (possibly except for the largest males) can confidently take on a healthy 4-meter crocodile. It looks like Machli had big problems with the 3.5 m mugger, despite the fact that this mugger wasn't even twice as heavy as Machli, but rather only one-third heavier. Mugger also suffered from drought and was quite lethargic, at least in the video. But it took a whopping 13 hours for Machli to kill this crocodile, and she broke 2 canines in the process. Unlike almost all cases of lions killing crocodiles, this case is really well-documented and definitely more revealing than finding lions next to crocodile carcasses.

However, I would expect lions to kill a larger crocodile than tigers can if they attack in a group. At least they can take turns to tire the crocodile. But I have no idea what it should look like, since we have no observed and documented kills.

(10-19-2020, 10:06 AM)Shadow Wrote: I´ve seen in some discussions the person who was there, defending these measurements, telling that he personally measured one which was 13,5 feet and biggest crocodile found was 14 feet.

He visually estimated this crocodile at 14 feet, as far as I can remember:

In my opinion, this only confirms that this man is not very good at estimating the size of crocodiles. Machli definitely looks smaller compared to the crocodile she killed than any of these lionesses. A 14-foot crocodile can weigh as much as three average adult lionesses combined.

(10-19-2020, 10:06 AM)Shadow Wrote: Then again, there are countless videos of lions and crocodiles meeting each others, so selecting suitable videos it´s easy to make it look like, that crocodiles have no fear or that they are very afraid of lions.

My point was that if lions really began to develop the habit of hunting crocodiles, crocodiles would begin to exhibit more effective anti-predatory behavior as well. This may explain why no big cat becomes a crocodile hunter/killer in the long run. It seems that nothing will stop lions, tigers and even leopards from routinely eating smaller crocodiles, which very often allow big cats to get very close to themselves on the shore... But they don't. Crocodiles are also very flexible in behavior, and as they have learned to avoid humans in a short time in many places (and in some cases even change the reproductive strategy), they could easily learn to do this with any other predator dangerous for a certain size and age category.

Well, Machli was a tigress, so quite a lot smaller than male lions. So while Machli killed a crocodile estimated to be 12 ft, 14 ft means only half a meter more, while male lion is roughly 1,5-2 times bigger than a tigress. So I really don´t see anything extraordinary in it, that a lion kills a crocodile around 4 meters long.

But this starts to go in the circles and I don´t see any point to repeat same things around too many times. You have your opinion and I have mine. I have said already what I wanted to say in earlier postings concerning this and people can find those easily if interest. It´s also easy to find videos of different kind of encounters in between lions and crocodiles and in some single lions show how they can confront very big looking crocodiles alone. As said, choosing suitable videos things can be made to look anything, when talking about lions and crocodiles.

And what comes to it, from where this started now, I find it interesting, that with time I had to change my opinion. I thought a long time, that crocodiles simply dominate lions, but with time I have changed my mind. Big cats seem to be able to handle crocodiles surprisingly well, when they need to. I have found far more cases of lions killing crocodiles than vice versa. Overall when looking at big cats and crocodiles, known incidents leading to death of one, seem to be usually such, that crocodile is killed. Reply