He's all bad, but must he perish?

Repulsive, foul-smelling, a murderer and cannibal, feared, unloved and worshipped, a left-over from the pre historic but sought after for the delectation of woman and the fashion expert—the crocodile.

Few of God’s creations are hated as much as this predatory, awkward armour-plated creature whatever his name, crocodile, alligator, caiman, mugger, gavial—all identical in the main, all different—to the expert.

Does the crocodile deserve his evil record? Is he fit for nothing but death and rebirth as a handbag or a pair of shoes?

Throughout the ages, from Hero dotus, the Greek historian, who seemed fascinated by the beast, down to its latest chronicler, C. A. W.

Guggisberg, a very full dossier has been compiled of his habits, waking, sleeping, murdering, loving, eating or playing parent to his unattractive young. And most of the stories about him seem to be true.

From his first encounter with the crocodile on the Victoria Nile, naturalist Guggisberg seems to have

made it his life’s study. The result is a fully-documented treatise of 186 pages in which the crocodile is thoroughly dismembered. For one thing, he seems to have stopped “evolving”. He has lived unchanged for millions of years.

Despite his natural enemies and the fact that the infant mortality rate among new-born crocs is somewhere around 98 per cent., he’s managed to maintain his numbers and position all over the tropics, from the Amazon to Australia’s Amhem Land, from India to New Guinea’s Fly River and all over Africa. That is until a mere two decades ago. Now he’s in grave danger of extinction. There’s no prize for guessing at whose hands he is perishing.

Crocodile-skin handbags and alli gator-skin shoes became all the rage a little more than 20 years ago. The price on the crocodile’s skin shot up.

His haunts became more easy of access; killing more expert; his killers more mobile. Where once he lived in his thousands, he is now a mere hand ful or has vanished altogether.

“In two nights on the Fly River, Bustard saw an average of four crocodiles, while in the course of eight nights spent on the Sepik only six were observed,” writes Guggis berg. “In most of the northern Aus tralian rivers saltwater crocodiles have been practically shot out since the end of World War 11. On a trip of nearly five months in 1965, which took him from the Gulf of Car pentaria to the eastern coast of Queensland, Australian animal photographer Graham Pizzey was not able to find even a single specimen.”

If the saurian becomes extinct like his long-dead cousins, the bronto saurus or the dinosaur, will it matter?

Relatives of the two or three thousand killed every year on the Nile by crocodiles or of the lesser number in New Guinea would be jubilant, no doubt. What does Guggisberg say?

“The important part played by the Nile crocodile in the ecology of African waters has been clearly documented, and the adverse effect its extermination is known to have on fisheries should provide a further

incentive to the protection of the species.”

Again: “In view of the materialistic times we live in, the economic value of crocodilians especially with re gard to tourism and the skin trade— is sure to furnish by far the strongest arguments for assuring their survival, though as a naturalist I cannot help thinking that first and foremost they should be preserved for what they really are; not ‘hideous monsters’ or ‘loathsome beasts’ but living monu ments of almost unbelievable an tiquity! The day a hunter kills the last of them, a direct link with the age of the dinosaurs will have been severed.”

Hopefully he records, however, that efforts are now being made to control the slaughter and preserve the species for its own sake, for tourism, for the handbag trade, and for posterity.

But, Guggisberg is not preoccupied with the ecological aspect of the crocodile to the exclusion of all the other facets of its existence. His book contains dozens of absorbing tales— of the croc as a god, as a “pet”, as the “retriever” for the chief who had his pet croc raid an adjoining harem and bring him, unharmed, the pick of the bunch. There is the story of the horrifying incident in Burma in World War II when 1,000 Japanese soldiers, driven into the swamps by Allied tanks, were almost all attacked and eaten by hordes of crocodiles.

What a feed for the crocs. And did they store away their prey until it was “high”?

Guggisberg corrects that miscon ception of the saurian’s eating habits, and dozens more. But, and he doesn’t attempt it—he doesn’t give the animal a clean bill. It’s still repulsive, foul smelling, a murderer, etc., etc. It makes interesting reading, however. —JC. (CROCODILES, their natural history, folklore and conservation, C. A. W.

Guggisberg, Wren Publishing Pty Ltd, Melbourne. $6.75).

Tin-Tin in Tibet is a very humorous book, made in a cartoon like fashion. The main characters were flying to Tibet to look for a Chinese friend. Tin-Tin, a main character eventually found him very sick because he was involved in a tragic plane crash.

However, it was no easy road for Tin-Tin and Captain Haddock the other main character. It was snowing and it was a very long struggle.

Tin-Tin’s never-say-die attitude was really the thing that found him. A very enjoyable book. —Peter Baxter, aged 11. (TIN-TIN IN TIBET, Methuen Children’s Brooks. $2.05).