Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I swear, i read somewhere that there are 30 foot croc's in the world,
my wife and i where speaking about it, she say's i'm full of stuff , and she needs to see proof, i thought it would be just
a very easy process of intering a few key words in a search engine and i would be able to find some kind of propaganda?
but no, i can't belive that i'm having such a hard time finding
info on one of the greatest reptiles ever, so please , could any of you please point me in the right direction? and anything any
of you have to add would be super cool!
Thanks,
DJW

30? crap thats big... i think i heard of a near 20 feet or a bit more, think they found it in some big pipe, but wow... 30 feet is huuuuge, i wana see that croc hunter from tv tackle that one lol

that one in the pipe was a fake. its like holding a fishermen holding a fish close to the camera to make it appear bigger than it is. that one from the pipe was estimated by very expierienced people on this forum to be 12ft. we had discussions on this forum a while back on this topic and the largest croc in the world topic... the laargest croc was said to be about 19ft deffinately not 30ft. yet even the 19ft there wasn't really much documentation. hope this helps

k

Rodney STEEL talks in his book "Crocodiles" about 10 m long C.porosus. A big Saltwater Crocodile, shot in the 50´s at the Norman River in southeastern Gulf of Carpentaria,Australia,had 8,64 meters in length.
The largest crocodilian in captivity is YAI, a hybrid croc at the Samutprakarn Crocodile Farm in Thailand, it has a little bit more than 6,3 meters (19 ft.).The biggest one in the US seems to be UTAN at Alligator Adventure in North Myrtle Beach, SC.

Ralf
Link

Sorry, guys: STEEL talked about 9 m Salties, but WERMUTH & FUCHS
told 10 m as maximum length for the Saltwater Crocodile (C. porosus). 9 or 10 meters: These are very big crocodilians, and everybody, who has seen UTAN or YAI, knows, what a 6 m croc means.
Tomistoma Task Force

Doggoneit!! i must be wrong? i think the one i read about was in asia? i must have calculated the meters wrong or something?
but thanks anyway! guy n' girls
DJW

Ralf,

The 10m croc reported by Wermuth and Fuchs has since been disproved. The skull is held by the BMNH, if I remember correctly, and comes out at 17 or 18 feet by extrapolation (that's around 5 metres, not 10 m). The 8.5 metre croc from Queensland has also never been proven, and frankly I have great trouble believing the apparent comedy of errors that the experienced and bush-savvy hunters must have made to prevent any evidence from surviving.

The largest crocodile that can be proven - ie. was measured with a tape measure by a zoologist - was a recently skun croc from Papua New Guinea. This skin measured just over 6.2 metres (20.3 feet), was missing approximately 10cm of its tail, and being a skin would have been a slight underestimate of total size.

There is a skull from Orissa, India, that when extrapolated up would have come from a 21 to 23 foot long crocodile, but without the whole animal its real size is a mystery.

There are plenty of photos and stories, but as far as I'm concerned I like to see someone use a tape measure! Having seen a lot of wild C. porosus, a lot of measurements of wild C. porosus, and the size range they typically grow to, I can believe a croc in the 20 to 23 foot range would be rare but possible. But 27 - 28 feet (8.5 metres)...? Exaggeration seems a far more likely explanation in the face of insufficient evidence.

Hi Adam,
thanks for your helpful response.
But i am really not sure, how big an old crocodilian can get.
I heard about nearly 90 cm skulls, so....
As you know, Yai is not really an old animal, and it will get older and perhaps bigger...Ok, he is a hybrid...
The reason, we dont find bigger crocs in Australia today may be because of all these poaching activities till the 1970´s.Im not sure, and all my informations are from literature, but I saw some real big crocs, as you know.
Take care,
Ralf

Ralph, I am very cynical! As there's no evidence that crocs grow indefinitely, it's hard to see how even very rapid early growth can lead to 30 foot long monsters. It would be an interesting exercise to estimate the typical growth rate that a croc would need to achieve in order to reach 30 feet long, just to see how feasible it would be compared with known croc growth rates.

Ultimately, I need to see a tape measure applied to a croc's length before I'll believe its size. I'm quite sure the roughly 6.3 metre croc from PNG isn't the longest saltie that's ever existed, but it's probably fairly close.

The largest recorded croc by "tape measure" was an American Crocidile that measured an even 23 feet from the Orinoco Basin. The next would be a prodigious Indian Gavial at 21 ft. 6 inches. The biggest saltie was 20 ft. The largest American Alligator was 19 ft. 2in. These are actual recorded measurements not a mere guess.

So where were these measurements published, and who measured them in each case? I need to see some hard evidence. The PNG 20.3 ft C. porosus was published in Herp Review by J. Montague in 1984.

Hard evidence published?

Check the Peterson Field Guide to Reptiles and Amphibians by Conant and Collins

Then write to Dr. Collins and call him a liar (or a slipshod researcher). I dare you.