A Crocodile With Life After Death

There is an animal that can bite—it might even slash off a man’s arm—after it is dead. Alive it is relatively inoffensive. Being killed makes it positively mad.

Its uncanny ability to bite half an hour or more after its neck has been broken is a major risk for followers of one of the most adventurous of professions—the jungle crocodile hunters. Their story is a saga paralleling that of the Antarctic whalers who first told of Moby Dick. One of the most expert of them is Dr. Fred Medem, Smithsonian collaborator and professor of zoology at the University of Bogota. He has twice been bitten painfully by “dead” reptiles.

The animal is the caiman, smaller than either alligator or crocodile and probably more closely related to the former. Its hide, like that of its two fellow crocodillians, is valuable for leather and during the past few years it has been pursued close to extinction by professional hunters in Colombian and Brazilian jungles and lagoons. Dr. Medem is an eminent zoologist. He doesn’t believe, of course, that any animal that is completely dead can bite off a man’s arm, but he is hard put to explain what he himself has experienced. He thinks that part of the caiman’s nervous system which activates its snout and mouth is somehow disconnected from the rest and does not die at the same time. Thus the dead reptile has no consciousness when it bites. It is a reflex action of one small segment of the nervous system that somehow is not completely dead.

There is only one way to be safe for an indefinite period after the caiman is killed. That is to chop a hole in its neck and run a pointed stick into the medulla oblongata, the reflex action center at the base of the brain. When this is destroyed the ability to bite is lost. One can proceed to skin the animal without fear of losing an arm or a finger. Ordinarily this reptile will not attack a human. It lives on smaller animals—wild and domestic pigs and the pig-like capybaras—that venture into the jungle rivers.

Dr. Medem has recently discovered a curious new sub-species of caimans confined, so far as known, to the upper reaches of the Apaporis river, a tributary of the Amazon. It is much more crocodile-like in appearance than the rest of the family, with a very long, narrow snout. The others have broad, flat snouts. It retains prominent bony ridges over its eyes—one of the most striking characteristics that distinguish the caimans from both crocodiles and alligators.

A much more dangerous animal is the Orinoco crocodile, a large reptile which lives only in the Orinoco and its tributaries and has a taste for human flesh. The creature is especially dangerous to bathers and to women doing their washing in the rivers. This is one of the two species of these dreaded reptiles known in South America. The other is a smaller, less aggressive creature of seashore rivers and lagoons. The inland species now is quite close to extermination. Until recently it was pursued by both German and French companies of professional crocodile hunters. Now they have given up because the profits have become too small for the risk.

The technique for hunting caimans and crocodiles is strikingly like that of the whale hunters and just as dangerous. The hunter goes out on the river with a boat at night. The boat carries searchlights which move over the surface of the water. Here and there appear glittering red and yellow spots. The red spots are the eyes of crocodiles, the yellow ones eyes of caimans. The boat is propelled by jungle Indians who have developed the ability to paddle noiselessly. They row to within about two yards of a pair of glittering eyes. Then the hunter throws his harpoon, equipped with a special aiming apparatus. He has developed skill in hitting precisely the right spot, judged by the position of the eyes. For a crocodile he aims at where the neck should be, for a caiman at the flank. The neck of the latter reptile is protected by heavy scales. A gun never is used. The wounded reptile simply would dive into deep water where its body could not be recovered. After the harpoon, with a rope attached, finds its mark there is a terrific struggle as the reptile tries to get into deep water. The caiman finally is “killed” by chopping through its spinal cord with a machete. That is, everything is dead except the brain and the snout. The spine of a crocodile is broken by a blow with a large ax just behind the shoulders. It stays dead.

The caimans migrate overland from lagoon to lagoon during the dry season. When at last they find water they dig holes in the mud and sleep until the heavy rains return, when they emerge and resume their normal ways of life. Quite exciting stories are told of persons who happen to meet migrating bands of these “barbillos”, creatures about three feet long. Ordinarily they will not attack humans but they will not hesitate to do so if they feel they are threatened. Once one of them gets a grip it is almost impossible to break away unless one happens to have a machete.