Re: Crocs regrowing their tails

[Garrison Hilliard <garrison@efn.org>]

On Wed, 12 Jan 2000 19:44:02 +0000, you wrote:

>Chris Lavers <chris.lavers@nottingham.ac.uk> wrote
>
>>'Grilled crocodile tail is an extremely popular dish and not too damaging
>>as the crocodile, once back in water, quickly grows a new tail.'

This sounds like utter bovine pre-fossilized coprolite material.

>Several years ago I saw a crocodile in an Indian zoo (C.porosus - Indo-Pacific
>crocodile which is also found in Vietnam and probably the only wild species
>present in that country now) with only a quarter of its tail. On my enquiry the
>keeper told me that it was found several years earlier on a river bank with its
>tail badly mangled, probably by the propeller of a motor boat. Its tail was
>amputated by the vet of the zoo. The zoo keepers knew that it wont survive in
>the wild as it would not be able to swim properly or hunt and kept it in the 
>zoo.
>Its tail did not grow back at all.
>
>The author might have referred to Water Monitor (V.salvator) which in many
>south-east Asian countries is often called the Land Crocodile. But I am not
>sure whether monitor lizards can regrow their tail either. However, monitor
>lizards are regularly eaten in most part of south-east Asia.

P.S. For a short time in my life, I lived in a deserted optician's
shop in Puerto Rico, where I grilled and ate a Tegu (tastes like a
small, feathered Galliform dinosaur).
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