#central african slender-snouted crocodile

[animal-families-tournaments]

[weaselle]

i've seen this before but i just now heard some people talking about it so i'm going to weigh in.

(I don't sit around day dreaming about fighting animals or anything, but i live under a hill with coyotes and a mountain lion and i've done a fair amount of wandering around where the wild things are, so this kind of thing does cross my mind)

First of all, we're talking a fight not an altercation. I think there's a chance i could drive off just about any of these animals, by bluffing them or acting weird enough or getting them to give a little ground which often turns into giving more ground and going away. I've navigated interactions with wild animals before, and you can usually make yourself seem like not enough of a threat and yet also too much trouble, and end things before they really begin.

What we're talking about is after these tactics fail and you are already in a physical fight.

And for the purposes of this i'm going to say this includes fighting for your life against a predatory attack -- there's a big difference between driving off a large predator that is just roughing you up because it's mad you're in its territory, and one that has already decided its for sure going to kill you, and we're going to say "what if the worst should happen". So:

rat

house cat

goose

medium sized dog

eagle

large dog are all a yes from me. Large dog and eagle are trouble but doable -- i'm very experienced with large dogs and i grew up around geese and the eagle is going to be the same as the goose but you'll walk away with more significant injuries. Like, an eagle weighs the same as a jack russell terrier and has hollow bones, if i can get a hold of it i can end it, but i'm probably gonna need, like, so many stitches. Same with the large dog, i'll likely need to visit the hospital after (and i'd be real sad) but i could get it done if i had to.

now. The unknowns. These are all animals that there's some chance, however small, i might survive.

wolf

king cobra

crocodile

kangaroo

Wolf. So. I work with dogs professionally, I have had to break up several dog fights, i'm comfortable physically interacting with very large dogs, and that's why i think i could definitely win a fight against a dog if i had to. I've also come face to face with a wild wolf in the woods (which was pretty damn scary) and i think there's a chance i could win against a single wolf basically the same way i would win against a large dog, but also, wolves are not dogs, they literally kill other animals all the time, they're like, professionals at it, so. Maybe.

King cobra, yeah, i can for sure kill this poor snake with my bare hands, but whether or not i can do it without getting a lethal dose of venom stuck into me is a big coin flip. Is it winning if you kill the snake but you also die? not to me

Crocodile just depends on so much. I mean probably not. Like, a large adult Saltwater or Nile croc? absolutely not, nope, no way, i'm for sure deadzo. But crocs come in a lot of sizes and shapes. And many of them sort of keep growing their whole life, so, a 5 and a half foot croc might be an adult or i could be facing an adult crocodile of the same species that weighs more than 2,000 pounds.

Gharial crocs can also get way bigger than i can do anything with, but they have a really thin snout designed to catch fish. Other species of crocs also have smaller, thinner mouths and specialize in fish, like the central african slender-snouted croc, which do not get as large as their nile cousins. And various smaller species of crocodile exist that might be adults at only three or four feet long.

Most crocodiles enter tonic immobility like sharks, so if i can get it on its back for a couple breaths it will go sort of unconscious, and if it's not too big i might be able to make that happen. Of course, even if it only weighs like 40 pounds, if we're in water that's deeper than i am tall it can just latch on and keep my head under the surface... so a lot depends on what kind of croc, what size, and what specific ground/water environment we're in. The answer is, probably not. But it depends.

Kangaroo. So that leaves this guy. Basically, this is like fighting a soccer player who has a short-bladed knife in each hand and a spike on each foot. The kicks are hard, and i'm getting cut up real good, but there's some chance i could win. Or not. It kind of depends on the individual. Some adult kangaroos are smaller than me and some are bigger than me and i do know how to fight but then again i definitely fight less often than the kangaroo does and it has weapons and i don't, so. Likely not. But maybe. Depends. Also depends on what you mean by "win". It definitely doesn't want to eat me and they don't usually fight to the death -- I've seen a person punch a large kangaroo hard enough to make it change its mind about wanting to fight. i kinda think i might be able to achieve a similar outcome.

Okay, now the rest of these are just crazy! Chimps are a big no, they can do everything i can do but stronger, better, and with fangs.

A gorilla? If they do decide you have to be ended, gorillas are an even worse opponent, there's just no way. A male gorilla has jaw muscles the same size as my biceps. They have a bite force twice as strong as a lion's. They can weigh more than 400 pounds. There's absolutely no way.

And there's literally nothing an unarmed human could do against a determined lion, brown bear, or elephant. Less than zero chance if one of those things decides you have to die.

look, the smallest of those last three would be a lioness. Here's three big strong men testing their strength against a single lioness

dude. She's not even trying very hard. A wild lioness that decided an unarmed person was food? There's basically nothing you can do once she takes action, all your options depend on doing something to make her change her mind before she gets a hold of you. It's the same for a brown bear, and lmao, an elephant could literally throw a car at you. An elephant can weigh six thousand pounds and lowkey has to move carefully around a person to not kill them accidentally.

idk who these 6-17% think they are, but some of these "yes" answers up on that poll are insane.

[games-gamesdesign]

Species

There are a total of 18 extant species have been recognized.

American crocodile (Crocodylus acutus)

Hall's New Guinea crocodile (Crocodylus halli)

Orinoco crocodile (Crocodylus intermedius)

Freshwater crocodile (Crocodylus johnstoni)

Philippine crocodile (Crocodylus mindorensis)

Morelet's crocodile (Crocodylus moreletii)

Nile crocodile (Crocodylus niloticus)

New Guinea crocodile (Crocodylus novaeguineae)

Mugger crocodile (Crocodylus palustris)

Saltwater crocodile (Crocodylus porosus)

Borneo crocodile (Crocodylus raninus)

Cuban crocodile (Crocodylus rhombifer)

Siamese crocodile (Crocodylus siamensis)

West African crocodile (Crocodylus suchus)

Osborn’s dwarf crocodile (Osteolaemus osborni)

Dwarf crocodile (Osteolaemus tetraspis)

West African slender-snouted crocodile (Mecistops cataphractus)

Central African slender-snouted crocodile (Mecistops leptorhynchus)

[spinnysocks]

i have been summoned!

Nile Crocodile:

The African variety

Will Tear You Limb From Limb With No Regrets

Likes rivers as its name suggests

Kills hundreds to thousands of humans per year (more than all other crocodilian species combined 🙃) as a hobby

The species that Gustave was ... or is

Smooth snout

Saltwater Crocodile:

The Modern Dinosaur, The Big One, The Largest Reptile Alive Today!

The South-east Asian to Northern Australian variety

Loves coasts, marshes and swamps

Rides 370 miles of ocean currents like it's nothing

Can live for 7 decades, one extra than the Nile!

Pair of ridges partway down its snout

Gharial:

What The Fuck Is That

The Northern Indian and Nepalese variety

Adopts the Wide And Calm Slow-Moving River life

Not much known about it, partly due to its Critically Endangered status :(

Long, slender snout straight from god's lab into hell (/j, i love them)

Most recognisable despite being The One No One Knows About

American Alligator:

The American variety, I wonder how we knew that!

The Disney World Menace

Makes golf courses freshwater wetlands its home

Can preserve itself under ice

Oldest one we know about lived to 85 years!

Broad snout and dark skin gives it a pretty unique appearance

Cuvier's Dwarf Caiman:

Just a little guy!

The Northern and Central South American variety

Must have forest

A pet, alarmingly! Only to own if you're an expert, kids!

Gets jumped by jaguars, green anacondas and boa constrictors

Smallest species of crocodilian, so no not hard to identify

i love this chain so much, thank you for tagging me! :}

I felt like I needed to clarify some things before we could continue any more conversations on this godforsaken website.

I’m very proud of the European Robin, I think I really captured it.

[animal-lover94]

Central African Slender-snouted Crocodile

Mecistops leptorhynchus

🔔 It was considered to be of the same species as the West African slender-snouted crocodile (Mecistops cataphractus). Their genetics diverged more than 8 million years ago. As both populations continued to evolve, the genetic drift caused a difference of more than 5% in important genes. Base on the analysis of DNA it was established as a separate species in 2018.

[draconesmundi]

So the african cryptids were removed, but do you have the art/entries for them saved somewhere? It’d be interesting to see, and might work as a sort of “sneak peak” without revealing any actual book content

Art and bio entry were done on paper, but I do have the mythology entry recycled into the makara/grootslang chapter (as this animal has a range covering South Asia, West Asia and Africa) and it looks a little like this:

Cryptozoology in the Congo Basin:

The Congo Basin in Central Africa contains one of the largest areas of undisturbed rainforest in the world. It is home to both pygmy civilisations and tribes from the Bantu language groups. Europeans will often use the Congo rainforest as an imagined home for all sorts of monsters; the pseudoscience of cryptozoology (the study of ‘hidden animals’) places many terrifying reptiles in this area.

Many of these imagined creatures, or ‘cryptids’ have features of both elephants and reptiles, and therefore may be inspired by the makara, who has been known to live in that part of Africa.

The most famous of these cryptids is mokele-mbembe – a cryptid loosely based on local words of the Bangala people. The cryptid was first reported by Carl Hagenbeck in 1909 as a mysterious ‘half elephant half dragon’. In 1913  Ludwig Freiherr von Stein was the first to report the name Mokele Mbembe, and added that it was brownish grey in colour, the size of an elephant, a long neck, a single long tooth or horn. The animal was known to attack boats but leave its victims dead and uneaten. Since 1913 there have been 12 more expeditions into the Likouala swamp region specifically in search of the Mokele-Mbembe, with results ranging from rare sightings to just broken twigs.

German adventurer Lt Paul Gratz in 1911 reported a crocodile-like creature with scale-less skin and clawed toes in Lake Bangweulu, and named it Nsanga.

Alfred Aloysious Smith’s 1927 memoir about exploring the Congo mentions the discovery of a giant pan-sized footprint with three claws – he named the owner of this footprint Amali. He also mentions the Jago-Nini or ‘giant diver’, who was known to emerge from the water to eat people.

While many of these monsters can silently sneak up on people, the Mbielu-Mbielu-Mbielu is known for its loud ‘mbielu’ call, and is named for it. Mbielu-Mbielu-Mbielu is a large reptile with ‘planks’ or wedge-shaped plates coming out of its back in the Likouala region of the Republic of Congo, reported by the people living in the villages of Bounila and Ebolo.

Another creature, the Nguma-monene was sighted near the Dongu-Mataba river, with a low slung belly, and triangular dorsal plates similar in appearance but smaller than those found on the Mbielu-Mbielu-Mbielu; another large and dangerous reptilian animal first sighted by a European but barely mentioned in local mythology, reported by Joseph Ellis in 1961 and in 1971.

The Emela-ntouka (or ‘killer of elephants’, also called Aseka-moke or Ngamba-namae) is a large brown animal possessing a single horn or tusk, lacking dorsal plates or ridges (a common feature in many Congo lake monsters) and has the overall appearance of a reptilian rhinoceros with elephant ears. One of the earliest descriptions of this animal was in 1954 by Lucien Blancou – a game inspector for Likouala game reserve. Two expeditions were made in 1980 and 1981 by Dr Roy P Mackal.

The Badigui or Ngakoula-ngou is described as giant snakelike animal, while the Chipekwe is a giant lizard that preys on hippos, elephants and rhinos. The Irizima, said to live in Lake Edward, is black, larger than a hippopotamus, horned, and breathes so heavily it can cause large waves in the water.

All these creatures are reptilian, some are serpentine, and many have the ears of an elephant, suggesting there is some connection with them and the makara. The only other large reptiles in the Congo Basin are the Nile crocodile (Crocodylus niloticus), the West African slender snouted crocodile (Mecistops cataphractus), the African rock python (Python sebae), none of which are so monstrously huge that they could tackle rhinos and elephants.

Some notes

As this was lifted from a list of notes I have on world mythology, the prose in itself is almost list-like. I know a few people who are better at sentence structure than I am, and will get notes from them in the next edit.

Also the ‘makara’ is a creature from Indian mythology. I have a dragon with elephantine features (which are always changing, so I’m not posting the biology bio yet until I have this down to a point!) and I am using the ‘elephant dragon’ chapter to talk about the Makara in Indian mythology, the Grootslang in South African and sometimes Benin mythology, a brief overview of cryptids in the Congo and some links to ‘Mesopotamian Chaos Serpents’ - these are huge aquatic serpents with vast ranges, and therefore dwell in a variety of locations. In my 2020 rewrite I might make the Indian, West Asian and African ‘elephant faced dragons’ into different species or subspecies, or I will keep them all as one very diverse species. Who knows?

Sharing My Work

Obviously I need to share more stuff, but for things with complete bios AND complete images, I need to go back to 2017, or I would need to show current works in progress - the former option shows outdated words and art, the latter option shows things which are in constant change.

When I complete a full 2020 rewrite of a chapter, should I put the 2018 version of the chapter somewhere on my blog for easy access? I was planning to have a gallery of 2017 artworks and maybe the 2018 artworks as well if I replace them all with new art, but would art+writing be appreciated?

[symbiotic-science]

“The African slender-snouted, or sharp-nosed, crocodile (Mecistops cataphractus) is medium-sized, lives in freshwater habitats, and, as its name suggests, has a long and slender snout,” said team leader Dr. Matthew Shirleyof Florida International University’s Tropical Conservation Institute and colleagues.

“When we analyzed the DNA and physical characteristics of crocodiles in the wild and in captivity in six African countries, we found two distinct species of slender-snouted crocodiles: one unique to West Africa and one unique to Central Africa.”

Named the Central African slender-snouted crocodile (Mecistops leptorhynchus), the newfound species is the first new living crocodile species to be described in nearly 85 years.

“At first glance, the West African and Central African slender-snouted crocodiles appear quite similar,” the scientists said.

“In addition to the differences in their DNA, we found differences in the skull shape and scales that strongly support the existence of two species.”

The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) listed slender-snouted crocodiles as ‘Critically Endangered’ in 2014.

[scottbcrowley2]

Researchers discover new crocodile species - Wed, 24 Oct 2018 PST

For nearly 85 years, crocodile experts knew of just three species in Africa – the dwarf, Nile and slender-snouted. And now, while studying the endangered slender-snouted variety, lead researcher Shirley and a team of researchers discovered a new species of the African crocodile, naming it the Central African slender-snouted crocodile. Researchers discover new crocodile species - Wed, 24 Oct 2018 PST

[animal-families-tournaments]

[faunafocus]

Slender-Snouted Crocodile

Newborn slender-snouted crocodiles are defended and cared for by both parents for some time after hatching. #slendersnoutedcrocodile #crocodile #crocodiles

Newborn slender-snouted crocodiles are defended and cared for by both parents for some time after hatching.

After a nest has been made and a clutch has been laid, slender-snouted crocodilian mothers guard their nests regularly throughout the incubation period.

Soon after the offspring hatch, the mother scoops the hatchlings into her jaws and carries them to the water. Newborns are defended and…

[ravenlightart]

Mais um crocodilo

New crocodile species found hiding in plain sight Studies of the Central African animal, which has unusually soft skin, also revealed its cousin to be critically endangered.

In National Geographic

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/2018/10/crocodile-new-species-slender-snouted-africa-news/

[coralcollectionbeardblog]

New crocodile species discovered, named the Central African slender snouted crocodile

[bizwhiznetwork]

Cryptic New Species of Crocodile Identified in Africa

https://bizwhiznetwork.com/cryptic-new-species-of-crocodile-identified-in-africa/

An international team of researchers has identified a cryptic new species of slender-snouted crocodile living in Central Africa. The Central African slender-snouted crocodile (Mecistops leptorhynchus). Image credit: Shirley et al, doi: 10.11646/zootaxa.4504.2.1. “The African slender-snouted, or sharp-nosed, crocodile (Mecistops cataphractus) is medium-sized, lives in freshwater habitats, and, as its name suggests, has a long and …

The post Cryptic New Species of Crocodile Identified in Africa appeared first on #Bizwhiznetwork.com | Business Opportunities & Products Unfolded.

[animal-lover94]

West African Slender-snouted Crocodile

Mecistops cataphractus

🔔 This species of crocodile was first described in 1824 and was thought to be distributed across West Africa and into Central Africa but the Central African species has been separated as the Central African Slender-snouted Crocodile (Mecistops leptorhynchus) based on studies in 2014 and 2018 that indicated that both were distinct species based on DNA analysis.

[hairtransplantz]

hairtrnsplntz : For the first time in more than 80 years, researchers have fully described and named a new crocodile species—the Central African slender-snouted crocodile https://t.co/BRAsoBGPSq #hairtransplant #hairturkey #hairtransplantturkey #hairtransplant #hairtransplantturkey #hairstyle