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Three species of crocodiles live in India; the Gharial, the Saltwater crocodile, and the Mugger. The Mugger or the Marsh water crocodile is the most widely distributed of the three and is the only one found in Goa. My first experience with a crocodile was when I was about nine years old. My dad had taken me to the Madras crocodile bank.
Romulus Whitaker showed us around and the highlight of the trip was when he let me hold a tiny baby crocodile! Six years later I returned to the croc bank with a vengence. This time it was going to be much bigger crocodiles and more serious stuff! Transferring crocodiles from one enclosure to another, removing croc excreta from the pens every morning, feeding the crocs twice a week and collecting the eggs during the breeding season. Capturing crocs to transfer them was the most exciting part then.
First Gerry Martin would gingerly noose the selected crocodile. Then someone would throw a sack over its eyes and two persons would simultaneously jump onto the crocodile: usually an experienced person would jump onto the neck of the crocodile and I would get to jump onto the base of the tail! Then the croc’s mouth would be bound, the entire croc shifted onto a ladder, lifted by several men, transferred to another pit and all the above steps reversed to set it free into its new enclosure.
Mugger crocodiles are much less likely to attack a human than salt water crocodiles. There was always far more tension among the handlers when we had to handle Saltwater crocodiles. In Goa though Muggers frequently inhabit the same canals that local fishermen wade into to fish there is almost never any conflict between the two. the photographs included with this article were taken on the boat trips I organize for my clients. We ply the Cumbarjua canal looking for interesting birds and most often we see atleast one or two Muggers hiding in the mangrove vegetation.
Like most crocodiles they are very shy and slide into the water an disappear if we take the boat too close to them. Muggers mostly feed on fish. But Muggers are pretty catholic in their diet and will eat just about anything they can overpower. J.C Daniel’s book Reptiles and Amphibians mentions that the recorded stomach contents of the Mugger have included leopard, wild dog, hyena, chital, sambar and nilgai fawn, four-horned antelope, barking deer, monkeys, domestic dogs, goats, calves, pigs, ducks, a variety of wild birds, snakes and soft shell turtles!
Muggers will lay between 3-40 eggs in a nest dug into the ground. The mother is extremely protective of her eggs and will attack anything that comes close to the nest. One interesting thing about crocodiles is that the sex of the babies is determined not by genes but by the temperature the eggs are hatched at. At certain temperatures babies hatching will be all female and and other temperatures all male!
