All articles tagged with #nile crocodile
The Nile crocodile has the strongest bite ever measured in a living animal (about 3,700 psi), but its opening jaw muscles are minuscule, so the mouth is easy to pin shut. This extreme closing power paired with weak opening muscles is an evolutionary design that favors ambush predation in water and the famous death roll, a strategy honed over roughly 100 million years.
A 16-foot Nile crocodile named Osama terrorized Luganga village near Lake Victoria, Uganda, killing 83 people between 1991 and 2005 by capsizing boats and dragging victims from the water; after a week-long stakeout, officials captured him alive in 2005 and he was sent to a crocodile farm, underscoring Nile crocs’ status as highly dangerous opportunistic predators.
A video captured a Nile crocodile attacking and killing a cheetah at a watering hole. Nile crocodiles are stealthy ambush predators that can lunge several times their own body length. They eat almost anything that moves and can eat up to 20% of their own body weight in one sitting. The crocodile's attack on the cheetah was a fatal bite to the neck, followed by drowning and dismemberment.