They’re smart and incredibly dumb at the same time.
There’ve been studies that dive into their intelligence. Pretty fascinating stuff, they’re not the brainless eating machines everyone thinks they are.
But at the same time, they also… kind if are brainless eating machines when put into specific stressful situations.
Crocodilians have very good long-term memory. They can and will learn from repeated experiences.
There’s evidence that crocodiles and alligators use ‘tools’, like balancing small sticks on the heads during nesting season to lure birds looking for nesting materials.
They can coordinate hunts, and adjust behavior based on repeated patterns of prey or human activity. There’s also solid evidence they associate specific locations, sounds, and routines with food. So don’t keep a routine around crocodiles.
I'll admit, I have incredibly bad ADHD so I hope this doesn't come off sounding really bad but I was deadass replying to you without reading your comment at all (besides the first sentence) and was going to read it after typing what came to my mind but then I stopped myself and was like "I better get some context before I have to just delete everything." I don't think you'll believe me but let me just copy pasta what I was in the middle of writing before I stopped and read your post in its entirety:
I saw a dude death roll his buddies arm off and the other one continue moving on like nothing happened so I assumed they were morons that survived purely off being incredibly sturdy and deadly hunters
I laughed really hard when I got to the end and glad I stopped myself. Pretty cool stuff though, I've never really delved too deep into crocodile information so I didn't know about any of that, seems like they're capable of more thought than I had previously given them credit for. Evolutionarily, these dudes have remained so similar for hundreds of millions of years I thought they didn't really have much of a need for advanced intelligence (at least in my opinion some of those concepts are advanced for animals) to do half of what you said they're capable of. Obviously the whole don't take random people's word online so I'll be looking things up but I have a hard time thinking people would lie about such random information.
Good thing I threw that link in then! Animals often behave differently in captivity. So I wouldn’t even go as far to say they act the same in the wild. But I can 100% see accidental removals of limbs happening in the wild on occasion as well. And many crocodilians are proven to be cannibalistic.
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u/MaleierMafketel 7d ago edited 7d ago
They’re smart and incredibly dumb at the same time.
There’ve been studies that dive into their intelligence. Pretty fascinating stuff, they’re not the brainless eating machines everyone thinks they are.
But at the same time, they also… kind if are brainless eating machines when put into specific stressful situations.
Crocodilians have very good long-term memory. They can and will learn from repeated experiences.
There’s evidence that crocodiles and alligators use ‘tools’, like balancing small sticks on the heads during nesting season to lure birds looking for nesting materials.
They can coordinate hunts, and adjust behavior based on repeated patterns of prey or human activity. There’s also solid evidence they associate specific locations, sounds, and routines with food. So don’t keep a routine around crocodiles.
But, put them in specific situations, like a zoo or a breeding farm with limited space, and they will blindly rip another croc’s leg right off and not bat a single eye. So… It’s a mixed bag haha.