When in my favorite Argentinian radio talk show I heard the terrible news that a crocodile had taken a young boy at the Disney’s Grand Floridian Resort & Spa in Orlando, Florida a few days ago I thought that they really wanted to say that an American alligator (Alligator mississippiensis) was the culprit.
However, checking on the crocodilian fauna in the Americas I was surprised that in fact there is a crocodile there! It is known as the American crocodile (Crocodylus acutus) and it is distributed from the Atlantic and Pacific coasts of southern Mexico to South America as far as Peru and Venezuela. It is also reported to occur in the Caribbean. In the United States it is found in Puerto Rico and the southern half of Florida.
Orlando is therefore to far North in Florida for an American crocodile to have been the culprit…
View original post 920 more words