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Crocodiles or true crocodiles are large semiaquatic reptiles that live throughout the tropics in Africa, Asia, the Americas and Australia. The term crocodile is sometimes used even more loosely to include all extant members of the order Crocodilia, which includes the alligators and caimans, the gharial and false gharial among other extinct taxa.
The fauna of Australia consists of a large variety of animals; some 46% of birds, 69% of mammals, 94% of amphibians, and 93% of reptiles that inhabit the continent are endemic to it. This high level of endemism can be attributed to the continent's long geographic isolation, tectonic stability, and the effects of a unique pattern of climate change on the soil and flora over geological time. A unique feature of Australia's fauna is the relative scarcity of native placental mammals. Consequently, the marsupials – a group of mammals that raise their young in a pouch, including the macropods, possums and dasyuromorphs – occupy many of the ecological niches placental animals occupy elsewhere in the world. Australia is home to two of the five known extant species of monotremes and has numerous venomous species, which include the platypus, spiders, scorpions, octopus, jellyfish, molluscs, stonefish, and stingrays. Uniquely, Australia has more venomous than non-venomous species of snakes.
The bull shark, also known as the Zambezi shark in Africa and Lake Nicaragua shark in Nicaragua, is a species of requiem shark commonly found worldwide in warm, shallow waters along coasts and in rivers. It is known for its aggressive nature, and presence mainly in warm, shallow brackish and freshwater systems including estuaries and (usually) lower reaches of rivers. This aggressive nature is a reason for its population being listed as vulnerable on the IUCN Red List. Shark-culling occurs near beaches to protect beachgoers, which is one of the causes of bull shark populations continuing to decrease.
A shark attack is an attack on a human by a shark. Every year, around 80 unprovoked attacks are reported worldwide. Despite their rarity, many people fear shark attacks after occasional serial attacks, such as the Jersey Shore shark attacks of 1916, and horror fiction and films such as the Jaws series. Out of more than 500 shark species, only three are responsible for a double-digit number of fatal, unprovoked attacks on humans: the great white, tiger, and bull. The oceanic whitetip has probably killed many more shipwreck and plane crash survivors, but these are not recorded in the statistics. Humans are not part of a shark's normal diet. Sharks usually feed on small fish and invertebrates, seals, sea lions, and other marine mammals. A shark attack will usually occur if the shark feels curious or confused.
Marine reptiles are reptiles which have become secondarily adapted for an aquatic or semiaquatic life in a marine environment. Only about 100 of the 12,000 extant reptile species and subspecies are classed as marine reptiles, including marine iguanas, sea snakes, sea turtles, and saltwater crocodiles.
The saltwater crocodile is a crocodilian native to saltwater habitats, brackish wetlands and freshwater rivers from India's east coast across Southeast Asia and the Sundaic region to northern Australia and Micronesia. It has been listed as Least Concern on the IUCN Red List since 1996. It was hunted for its skin throughout its range up to the 1970s, and is threatened by illegal killing and habitat loss. It is regarded as dangerous to humans.
The freshwater crocodile, also known as the Australian freshwater crocodile, Johnstone's crocodile or the freshie, is a species of crocodile endemic to the northern regions of Australia. Unlike their much larger Australian relative, the saltwater crocodile, freshwater crocodiles are not known as man-eaters, although they bite in self-defence, and brief, nonfatal attacks have occurred, apparently the result of mistaken identity.
The inland taipan, also commonly known as the western taipan, small-scaled snake, or fierce snake, is a species of extremely venomous snake in the family Elapidae. The species is endemic to semiarid regions of central east Australia. Aboriginal Australians living in those regions named the snake dandarabilla. It was formally described by Frederick McCoy in 1879 and then by William John Macleay in 1882, but for the next 90 years, it was a mystery to the scientific community; no further specimens were found, and virtually nothing was added to the knowledge of this species until its rediscovery in 1972.
John Stainton is an Australian film and television producer and director. He was close friends with the late naturalist Steve Irwin. Stainton also created Irwin's popular nature documentary television series, The Crocodile Hunter, in which he also directed and executive produced every episode, as well as the spin-offs, Croc Files and The Crocodile Hunter Diaries, and the feature-film, The Crocodile Hunter: Collision Course.
Crocodile attacks on humans are common in places where large crocodilians are native and human populations live. It has been estimated that about 1,000 people are killed by crocodilians each year.
Nigel Alan Marven is a British wildlife TV presenter, naturalist, conservationist, author, and television producer. He is best known as presenter of the BBC miniseries Chased by Dinosaurs, its sequel, Sea Monsters, as well as the ITV miniseries Prehistoric Park. He is also known for his unorthodox, spontaneous, and daring style of presenting wildlife documentaries as well as for including factual knowledge in the proceedings.
The Australian Reptile Park is located at Somersby on the Central Coast of New South Wales, Australia. It is about 71 kilometres (44 mi) north of Sydney, and is just off the M1 Pacific Motorway, near Gosford. The Park has one of the largest reptile collections in Australia, with close to 50 species on display. The wide variety of reptile species at the Park includes snakes, lizards, turtles, tortoises, tuataras, American alligators and crocodiles.
A man-eater is an individual animal or being that preys on humans as a pattern of hunting behavior. This does not include the scavenging of corpses, a single attack born of opportunity or desperate hunger, or the incidental eating of a human that the animal has killed in self-defense. However, all three cases may habituate an animal to eating human flesh or to attacking humans, and may foster the development of man-eating behavior.
The Kali River goonch attacks were a series of fatal attacks on humans believed to be perpetrated by a goonch weighing 90 kilograms (200 lb) in three villages on the banks of the Kali River in India and Nepal, between 1998 and 2007. This is the subject of a TV documentary aired on 22 October 2008, as well as an episode about the Kali River goonch attacks on the Animal Planet series River Monsters.
Wildlife attacks in Australia occur every year from several different native species, including snakes, spiders, freshwater and saltwater crocodiles, various sharks, cassowaries, kangaroos, stingrays and stonefish and a variety of smaller marine creatures such as bluebottles, blue-ringed octopus, cone shells and jellyfish.
Deadly... is a strand of British wildlife documentary programming aimed principally at children and young people, which is broadcast on CBBC on BBC One and Two and on the CBBC Channel. It is presented by Steve Backshall, with Naomi Wilkinson as co-host on Live 'n Deadly, and Barney Harwood as co-host on Natural Born Hunters. The strand began with a single series known as Deadly 60, and has subsequently expanded into a number of spin-offs, re-edits and follow-up versions.
Robert Harold Bredl is an Australian documentary film-maker, a reptile specialist and owner of the "Blue Planet Wildlife Park". He became known through his many documentaries, such as Killer Instinct (53 episodes), Deadly Predators (10 episodes), as well as The Barefoot Bushman series (8 episodes). His documentaries are being shown on TV stations in more than 45 countries worldwide. Rob's documentaries have so far been translated into 36 languages. His best known documentary Kissing Crocodiles has been shown in over 100 countries worldwide on Discovery Channel and National Geographic.
References
- ↑ Barrett, Annie. "'Your Worst Animal Nightmares': So, what's yours?". Entertainment Weekly. Retrieved 17 May 2022.
- ↑ Camacho, Melissa. "Your Worst Animal Nightmares". Common Sense Media. Retrieved 17 May 2022.
