Body of Australian man recovered from crocodile-infested river
DARWIN, Australia — The Associated Press
Published Monday, Aug. 26
Police have recovered the body of a man who attempted to swim across a crocodile-infested river in the Australian Outback as well as the carcass of a crocodile that was shot by authorities, officials said Monday.
Sean Cole, 26, was snatched by a crocodile and dragged under the water Saturday as he and a friend were swimming in the Mary River during a birthday party.
[How dare they call this river “crocodile-infested”! Crocs have lived there for 50 million years; humans didn’t reach Australia and begin their infestation until 50 thousand years ago.]
Northern Territory wildlife ranger Tom Nichols said Cole’s body and that of a 4.7-metre-long crocodile floated to the river surface early Monday. The crocodile was one of four that rangers shot in the hours after the attack.
“We believe that croc was responsible,” Nichols said, though he noted that further tests to match the bite marks on Cole’s body would be conducted.
[How many non-humans have to die when one exalted Homo sapien foolishly decides to challenge a dangerous river, probably in a drunken bet. And what if the bite-marks don’t match? Will rangers kill 400 more ancient crocodiles before they find the culprit?]
The river is infested with crocodiles, and officials said that as
locals the men would have known that.
“They just did something silly,” Nichols said.
Crocodile expert Grahame Webb, a Darwin zoologist, said he would not give a swimmer an even chance of crossing the 80-metre-wide river.
“Someone swimming in an area with crocs like that … crocs are going to zero in on them almost every time,” Webb said.
Mary River Wilderness Retreat manager Erin Bayard said the resort has several signs prohibiting swimming. Guests are advised not to go within five metres of the water’s edge because of the risk of large crocodiles lunging from the river to drag people in.
[Typical–a human dies doing something silly and at least three innocent crocodiles are killed for it.]
If he hasn’t procreated yet, he could get this year’s Darwin Award? 🙂
he’s certainly in the running.
@Melody
Exactly! LOL!
Considering it happened in Darwin, it cracked me up!
I was going to point that out.
Or in the words of Forrest Gump: “Stupid is as stupid does.” LMAO!
Typical, indeed. I hate people.
There it is again, your misanthropy is showing;)
LOL! To be honest, though, I don’t hate everybody. 😉
Right, present company excluded.
darwinian cleansing
too awful the crocs had to suffer
Right, they’ve lived on Earth for hundreds of millions of years, but humans could wipe them out in a week.
I would suppose that with seven billion people, we need to figure out a better exchange rate than 1 man = 4 crocodiles. What would have been far more effective punishment to reptilian society would be to ban all Mary River crocodiles from competing in the next Winter and Summer Olympics.
Or we could reduce their harvest quota of human swimmers.
““We believe that croc was responsible,” Nichols said, though he noted that further tests to match the bite marks on Cole’s body would be conducted.” If Australia claims to have forensic crocodile dentists who can tell the bite marks of one crocodile from the other, I’d say somebody’s pulling somebody’s leg & that’s a ‘croc’ of poop!