Croc! Our two accessibility tourCroc! Our two accessibility tour 

Croc! Lost Giants to Living Legends, Our two audio description and transcript includes:

• Our two
• Sweetheart
• Model freshie
• Crocodile rocks
• Flour drum

Part 2 includes: 

• Enormous crocodiles
• Biggest bite
• Bony bumps

Part 3 includes:

• Under a nest
• Feel real eggs
• Croc tail
• Egg samples
• Talking croc
• Prof. Craig Franklin

You are moving into a new section. A text panel on the wall summarises this section. It reads:  

OUR TWO

Today Australia is home to only two species of crocodiles: 

1. Freshwater crocodiles Crocodylus johnstoni – ‘freshies’ [; and]
2. Saltwater crocodiles Crocodylus porosus – ‘salties’ 

Saltwater crocodiles are the biggest reptiles on Earth. Despite their name, they can also live in fresh water. 

Freshies are only found in Australia, while salties are more widespread across the Indo-Pacific. 

Both are excellent predators, perfectly adapted to their environment. 

They are not descended from Australia’s prehistoric mekosuchine crocs. Fossils suggest saltwater crocs arrived here from Asia about 4 million years ago.

(SWEETHEART)

DESCRIPTION OF DISPLAY:

Mounted on a sloping wall are life-size replicas of a freshwater and saltwater crocodile. The saltwater replica is 5.1 metres long and poses with its jaws open. Its skin is a dark greyish colour. The freshwater croc replica is 1.6 metres long and is coloured with pale and dark mottled greens, browns, and creams.

An object label gives context for the display. It reads:

SWEETHEART

Meet Sweetheart, saltwater croc and Northern Territory icon, named after his home billabong – Sweets Lookout.

Sweetheart would bump boats and attack their motors. In 1979 he accidentally drowned while being captured for relocation. Taxidermists at the museum in Darwin preserved his body for display and made this fibreglass model.

DESCRIPTION OF DISPLAY:

On the plinth in front of the sloping wall is a touchable 3D printed model of Sweetheart. At 80 centimetres long, this model is about 15% of the real Sweetheart’s size.

An object label gives context for the freshwater croc replica. It reads:

MODEL FRESHIE

This model was made from casting a real freshwater crocodile. The replica is then painted to match the original. 

Casting involves creating a plaster mould from something (in this case a dead crocodile) and then pouring latex into the mould to create a replica.

Compare it to the saltie model. How are they similar? How are they different?

(CROCODILE ROCKS)

DESCRIPTION OF DISPLAY:

On the plinth in front of the sloping wall are two glass display boxes.

One box has multiple objects inside:

• two egg-shaped hairy-textured balls that are a bit larger than a tennis ball. One is made of dark stringy-looking material, the other is a pale-brown colour also made of long hairy fibres with white spines tangled in the hair.
• a smooth and shiny ball that appears hard and solid and medium brown in colour, a bit larger than a cricket ball, and
• a handful-sized pile of rocks and stones. Some stones as small as a thumbnail, some as big as a whole thumb. The rocks are a pale reddish-orange, and cream colour.

An object label on the plinth gives context for this display. It reads:

CROCODILE ROCKS

All these came from croc stomachs!

The fuzzy-looking ones are hairballs. Like cats, crocs cough up balls of indigestible bits, especially fur. Can you spot the echidna spines?

The large smooth one is a bezoar, a hairball that spent longer in the stomach. People believed bezoars could fight any poison (they don’t).

The small stones are gastroliths. There are three theories about them: crocs swallow them to grind up food, use the extra weight to sink more easily, or they’re just eaten accidentally.

(FLOUR DRUM)

DESCRIPTION OF DISPLAY:

Inside the other box is what appears to be scrap metal: an irregular-shaped, rusty, crumpled, piece of metal about 50 cm high and 10 cm wide.

An object label on the plinth gives context for this display. It reads:

FLOUR DRUM OR TOY DRUM?

What could a croc do to a metal box? Crunch, crush and contort it!

A croc had fun with this flour drum, recovered from the Cato River in Arnhem Land, Northern Territory.

Before plastic containers became common, people stored flour in metal drums to protect them from insects and moisture.

DESCRIPTION OF DISPLAY:

Beneath the object label are two illustrations.

One is captioned ‘before croc’ and shows what the flour drum looked like originally: a rectangular 50-cm-tall container standing on its short edge, and in the top, a round hole and lid.

The second illustration is captioned ‘After croc’ and shows the crushed mangled metal of the flour drum flattened to one-fifth its original height with the metal crumpled against itself.

(ENORMOUS CROCODILES)

A text panel on the wall gives context for this section. It reads:

ENORMOUS CROCODILES

5.48-metre-long Cassius held the Guinness World Record for largest croc in captivity, until he sadly died in 2024, aged about 120. He lived on Green Island near Cairns.

Who now holds the record is hotly debated – it’s hard to safely measure a massive male croc! The biggest ever properly recorded was 6.2 metres long. It drowned in a PNG fishing net in 1980.

Trophy-hunting early settlers targeted big crocs as status symbols. Sizes were exaggerated and photos used forced perspective to make the crocs look bigger.

But removing the dominant male from a territory makes the area more dangerous. Smaller males move in and fight to take over. They’re often aggressive to boats, as well as other crocs.

Hunting took our biggest wild crocs, but in the 50 years since it stopped, some have had a chance to grow.

DESCRIPTION OF DISPLAY:

Beside the ENORMOUS CROCODILES text panel are two colour photos. The first photo shows two men standing side by side on a boat docked in a marina. One of the men is without a shirt, and has his hands on his hips. Laid out on the deck in front of them is a very large crocodile bound with many ropes and straps. The caption for the photo reads: Cassius travelled to Green Island by ferry in 1987.

The second photo shows a silver-haired man with a beard, feeding a croc, using a long pole with a chunk of meat attached to the end with a spike. On the right side of the photo a large croc has its head flung upwards and its large jaws wide open about to snatch the food. The caption for the photo reads: George J Craig feeding Cassius (they had a special bond and died within weeks of each other).

 

(BIGGEST BITE)

A text panel on the wall gives further info about this section. It reads:

BIGGEST BITE

Saltwater crocodiles have the strongest bite ever measured.

Researchers (very carefully) encouraged them to crunch a force gauge.

Salties come in at 16,460 newtons of force — compared to dogs at around 1,400 [newtons] and humans at only 890 [newtons].

(Great white sharks might bite stronger than salties, but they haven’t been measured.)

A croc’s incredible bite is powered by huge muscles that are too big to fit into their skulls. They’re what give crocs their chunky necks.

 

(BONY BUMPS)

A text panel on the wall gives context for this display. It reads:

BONY BUMPS

Osteoderm means ‘bone in the skin’, and that’s what they are!

These bony plates sit inside a croc’s scales, giving them their bumpy-looking skin. They’re important for:

• protection – useful armour when fighting other crocs.
• locomotion – some connect to the spine to form a brace that supports the croc while walking.
• blood chemistry – when crocs are underwater not breathing, CO2 builds up in their blood, making it acidic. Alkaline ions from the osteoderms balance this out.
• temperature control – they help crocs absorb or shed heat.

DESCRIPTION OF DISPLAY:

On display are two different bone-maps showing the difference between saltwater and freshwater croc’s osteoderm structures.

On a waist-high plinth is a 1.5-metre-long glass case. Displayed inside it, on black matting, is the white skull of a freshwater crocodile. Laid out behind the skull - in the formation they would appear on the croc’s skin - are a multitude of small, white, bony-plates. It resembles a jigsaw puzzle with each piece corresponding neatly with its neighbour.

An object label gives context to this display. It reads:

Osteoderms and skull of a 2.8-metre male freshwater crocodile.

Look carefully at the osteoderms from its belly.

Instead of being single plates of bone, they’re made from lots of small spiny bones that interlock.

DESCRIPTION OF DISPLAY:

On the wall behind this display is another glass case with the skull of a saltwater croc on a black background and a grey outline forming the shape of its body. Arranged behind the skull and along the croc’s back are their osteoderms - in prominent rows down to the croc’s back legs. These bones are larger and the bumps protrude higher than those of the freshwater croc.

An object label gives context to this display. It reads:

Osteoderms and skull of a 2.6-metre saltwater crocodile.

Compare the number of osteoderms on this saltie to the freshie.

Saltwater crocs have fewer osteoderms and none in the belly scales. This makes them more popular with the leather industry.

DESCRIPTION OF DISPLAY:

At one end of the plinth is a touchable display: a vertical row of six casts of osteoderms taken from a crocodile skin. The sign next to them reads:

Touch the osteoderms.

Imagine having armour-plated skin.

 

(UNDER A NEST)

DESCRIPTION OF DISPLAY:

In a chest-high glass case is a replica saltwater croc nest, a domed mound about 1 metre across and 40 cm high, made of reeds and aquatic grasses. At the top of the mound is a clutch of about 12 croc eggs. The eggs are white and slightly larger and more elongated than a chicken egg. Some of the eggs in this replica nest are hatching, and tiny baby croc heads are peeking out from inside the egg shell. Two baby crocs - about 30 cm long - have fully hatched and are making their way down the mound.

A text panel gives context for this display. It reads:

UNDER A NEST!

Saltwater crocodile hatchlings are emerging from their eggs. Can you hear them call for their mother?

Female salties build their nests in the wet season (November–April), constructing a mound of earth and vegetation. They lay up to 50 eggs, which take about three months to hatch. Freshwater crocodiles dig holes in sand or soil and lay around 15 eggs.

Crocodile mothers are very protective. They defend their nests, help their babies hatch and even carry them to the water in their mouths. Once there, the hatchlings stick together in a crèche, watched over by Mum.

The model took Ewin Wood and his team about 230 hours to create. 

The eggs are real; empty ones donated by Australia Zoo.

 

(FEEL REAL EGGS)

DESCRIPTION OF DISPLAY:

Beneath the croc nest display, about 30 cm off the ground, is a small recessed shelf. If you reach inside it you can feel real crocodile eggs. These examples, which were donated by Australia Zoo, are saltwater crocodile eggs filled with plaster of Paris to make them more robust.

 

(CROC TAIL)

DESCRIPTION OF DISPLAY:

Beside the croc-nest display, mounted on the shin-high plinth is a touchable model of a crocodile tail. The tip of the tail is closest to the front, and you can follow it up to where the tail meets the wall, stopping just before where the croc’s back legs would appear.

 

(EGG-SAMPLES (GET IT?))

DESCRIPTION OF DISPLAY:

Above the croc-nest display is a long narrow glass case mounted on the wall. In it are five croc eggs arranged in a row. All the eggs are white, and more elongated than chicken eggs. The first two in the row are about 15 cm high and 4 cm wide, and the last three are about 10 cm high and 3 cm wide.

A small text panel gives context for this display. It reads:

EGG-SAMPLES (GET IT?)

Compare these eggs from saltwater (left) and freshwater (right) crocodiles.

Although [saltwater and freshwater] crocodile adults grow to very different sizes, their eggs are pretty similar.

Baby salties are about 30 centimetres long when they hatch, while baby freshies are about 24 centimetres.

The gender of the babies isn’t set when the eggs are laid - it depends on the temperature of the nest.

At 31-33 degrees Celsius, most hatchlings will be male. But if it's any cooler or hotter, they’ll be female. 

 

(TALKING CROC)

DESCRIPTION OF DISPLAY:

A video monitor mounted on the wall corresponds to a recording of Sonnie Flores who talks about the sounds crocodiles make to communicate with each other.

Lift the earphone on the wall to hear Sonnie, after using the touchscreen monitor to activate the recording. Afterwards you can take the on-screen croc sounds quiz.

(PROF. CRAIG FRANKLIN)

DESCRIPTION OF DISPLAY:

A video monitor mounted on the wall corresponds to an audio recording of University of Queensland’s Professor Craig Franklin, who talks about his crocodile conservation research and innovative use of GPS satellite tracking technology, time depth recorders and temperature recorders.

Lift the earphone on the wall and hold it to your ear to hear Professor Franklin.