Friday, April 13, 2007

Can a crocodile bite a man's arm clean off?


You've no doubt seen the story of the man who's arm was bitten off by a crocodile in Tiawan.
The arm belongs to vet Chang Po-yu at the Shousham zoo in Koahsiung.
It's a strinking photo isn't it?

The thing is, are croc's teeth not adapted for clamping, not cutting? Don't they bite their prey and drag them whole into the water to drown, rather than tear chunks off?

The teeth of most crocodillians are fairly short, uniform and cone like, perfect for clamping down hard on to a tasy vet's arm, but not cutting it clean off. They don't occlude in such a way to allow shearing and cutting of meat, like your front incisors do.

So what happend here? The arm looks severed just over half way down the forearm. You'll notice the the Did the crock clamp down, crushing the bone and then the skin and muscle tore off? Did the arm get clamped in, and the paramedics (or whoever) cut him free, leaving his fore arm in place? Or is the photo a fake?

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Most likely a zookeeper got confused between the meat he was meant to be feeding the croc and his own hand.

Consequently he detached his own hand, like a Transformer would, and threw that instead of the meat, only noticing his mistake when he tried to point at something later in the day.

Anonymous said...

Maybe he was too emo. It conjoured a similar response in the croc as it did you.

"I wish my grass was emo, then it would cut itself" hoho.

Last emo comment I promise - but you bring it on yourself my lad.

Viagra Online said...

sure a crocodile can easily do that, they have powerful muscles on their mouth and when they bite, they do bite. I have heard of this story months ago and it was real!

viagra generique france said...

Thank you! I didn't know they picked up on it until I saw your comment.