My Rambles//Your Shambles

The request is so urgent my boss needs it by the end of the work week. Which, y'know, is 5 PM on a Friday. So I have four hours to do it.

It's a forwarded request. Somebody contacted a member of the donation team asking for help, "I need a map from the Vietnam War to use for a presentation." It's somebody she's trying to coax into giving a five figure donation to the museum.

The request was asked to the donation team member, who then emailed my boss, who then emailed and called me urgently.

This map required:

North and South Vietnam in it

All four areas that South Vietnam was divided into for military purposes ('Corps') clearly delineated

Four cities, all of them horrifically misspelled, and only identifiable because I know what battle the requester is asking about (it’s in III Corps on the border with Cambodia) (the requester danced around the battle but I’m knowledgeable enough to identify it)

Has Laos and Cambodia in it

Has the Ho Chi Minh Trail in it

So. I was mad about the 'you have literally four hours to find a map with a lot of requirements.'

I was then mad at myself about finding a copyright free map from Texas Tech University within half an hour, proving her right for asking me to do it.

Then, after I found a map that perfectly met the requirements, I was equally amazed, baffled, and horrified when I read further into the forwarded email chain.

The donation team team member they were speaking to used AI to generate a map.

The above put half of North Vietnam in South Vietnam, made the Ho Chi Minh Trail a country, made 60% of Cambodia part of South Vietnam, put the DMZ extremely high up in North Vietnam, completely disconnected the southern tip of Vietnam, misplaced all of the Corps zones, etc etc

At the very last second the donation team member had a moment of divine clarity, remembering there's three historians on payroll to ask for this kind of thing from. So she contacted my boss while saying, "I had fun with this, but I decided I should check for accuracy before I send it to the donor! I need a fact check by the end of the day, then I send it"

My boss, while not the most knowledgeable on the Vietnam War, does know her geography. She took one look, and knew it was so off she called me to tell me how urgent it is that I look at the email and respond

It's rude. You're making someone take their time to read something you couldn't bother to write. You're telling them they were so unimportant you couldn't be bothered to actually take the time to say something yourself. And frankly, you're lying about it while you're at it.

isn’t he beautiful

listen to the SOUND when he bites

He is NOT, however, either the largest crocodile ever captured in Australia OR the largest ever in captivity.

A slightly larger crocodile has been reported (though not yet comfirmed) to have been captured at 5.58 meters.

And while the famous Brutus of the Adelaide River was estimated to be just slightly larger than Cassius at 5.5m, he was driven out of his territory by a younger and even larger crocodile, who as a result has been given the name, The Dominator.  He is estimated to be just over 6m.

This is Brutus, with an appropriate caption:

It is believed that he lost that arm in a fight with a Bull Shark.  

The Bull Shark lost.

THIS is the crocodile who kicked him out.  The Dominator:

And that’s STILL not the biggest.  

The largest living crocodile ever reliably measured was Lolong, who for the 1.5 years between his capture and his death was the largest crocodile ever held in captivity, at a whopping 6.17 meters (20 feet 3 inches) and 1075 kg (2,370 lbs).  He had been feeding on both humans and very large livestock in the Bunawan creek in Agusan del Sur in the Philippines.  It took 100 people all night to drag him to shore during his capture.

And here’s why:

Since then Brutus developed a habit of hunting and eating Bull Sharks.

Here’s him with a prey.

And if you thought that you’ll be safe if you just stay out of Australia then think again!

Meet Gustave the Nile Croc.

This crocodile became almost legendary for both it’s size and the habit of hunting both livestock AND humans.

So how big is Gustave?

No one is sure. Since he was NEVER captured.

His estimated size is of at least 5,5m  but some give him over 6m.

The terrifying parts are:

1) He is still growing having only about 60 years.

2) Adult crocodiles often perform a gesture of submission to him - something usually done by young crocodiles toward adults - Gustave is just THAT BIG.

3) His sheer size makes it difficult for him to catch agile prey Nile crocs tend to feed on - hence why he developed a habit of hunting either larger prey like Hippopotamus or creatures which are not good at spotting danger in the first place like livestock and humans.

And this is NOT ALL.

Gustave actually has a noticeable scars on his body - he was shot at east 3 times and stabbed with a spear or something similar at one occasion.

He lived to tell the tale - my question is:

What happened to that one dude who attacked Gustave with a spear?

THIS is Gustave:

And he is the PERFECT CROCODILE.  He is the perfect example of what I mean when I talk about (as I do) how the morphology of extremely large crocodiles adapts to the changing physics of their bite.

This is a typical adult Nile Crocodile:

And THIS is a god among his kind:

This is it, folks.  The Final Form.  THIS is what peak performance looks like.

Crocodiles and physics have an interesting relationship.  Crocodiles have, by a CONSIDERABLE MARGIN, the strongest bite of any animal on Earth.  EVER.  Scaled up estimates (based on Nile and Saltwater crocodiles) give the extinct Deinosuchus an estimated bite force MORE THAN DOUBLE the recently updated Tyrannosaurus bite estimates.  Living crocodiles have bite forces measured in the range of 5000 pounds per square inch, for an individual around 15-16 feet.  It is estimated that modern crocodiles in the range of 18-20 feet would have bit forces around 7-8000 psi or more.

That’s a problem.

Because a crocodile’s skull is only designed to handle so much pressure.  Go beyond that limit and the force of impact when those jaws snap shut could literally shatter their own skulls.

But evolution has spent hundreds of millions of years perfecting crocodiles, so PHYSICS ISN’T GOING TO STOP THEM.  What ends up happening in the skulls of these extremely large crocodiles is they will increase dramatically in mass to compensate for the increased forces.  A crocodile’s skull is almost exclusively solid bone, with only minimal space for nasal passages, a surprisingly advanced brain, and some slightly porous looking framework that helps the bone distribute the force over a larger area.  The effect is by far the most pronounced in Nile crocodiles, which most regularly feed on larger prey and need to make use of all that power.

Compare, 26 inch skull:

vs 29 inch skull:

Both of those are Nile crocodile skulls (or rather, replicas thereof).

And just for fun, here are the skulls of completely different (and very extinct species), Deinosuchus:

and Purussaurus:

The bigger the crocodile (within a given species), the more massive the skull needs to be to compensate for that UNBELIEVABLE bit pressure.  This is one way to see from a distance whether you are looking at a normal sized crocodile:

and a truly extraordinary individual:

One of the things about Gustave that’s so impressive is how healthy his teeth look.  A lot of large crocodiles, in their old age, have very worn down and often missing teeth.  They do replace them many times over a lifetime, but when they get very old this slows down.  Gustave, at least in every picture taken of him, had teeth that were in very good condition.

Even crocodiles much smaller than Gustave’s reported size (probably similar in size to Dominator or Lolong) tend to have smaller or more worn teeth:

than the pinnacle of his kind:

Edit: