Crocodile

CROCODILES!!

﻿FERTILISATION

Crocodile fertilisation is //internal,//and mating takes place in the water. They mate seasonally in early winter, so that the female can lay eggs in the Spring. After a female's eggs are fertilised she lays them, 20-70 at a time in a nest and buried in the sand. The average incubation period is about 80 days. She will become very defensive of the nest, sometimes helped to guard it by the male. When the offspring are about to hatch they chirp and the mother digs them out. Both parents help the young to get out by breaking the shells with their mouths. Once the babies are hatched, the mother leads or carries them in her mouth to the water.

The sex of the offspring is determined not by chromasomes but by the temperature during the later stages of their incubation, so all of the eggs in one nest will generally be the same sex. Males are produced at 31.6 degrees C, while females are produced if the temperature is higher or lower, meaning that there are more females born.

SURVIVAL OF THE YOUNG

Although nests are guarded by their mothers, pigs and goannas eat crocodile eggs, and floods can wash away nests. The mother crocodile will stay with her young for upto two years.

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