Another fun reptile fact!
Tortoises are mostly herbivorous. However, many species of tortoises will not stop munching on leaves where snails are sitting. They are happy to eat snails for the protein. And also to demonstrate the snails that turtles are significantly faster!
(Also I wish I had one particular video at hand, of Galapagos tortoises eating pumpkins)
Afaik most herbivorous will eat meat given the opportunity.
That’s either a really big banana or a really small alligator…
Stop pumpkin shaming the crocodiles!
Gonna need scientists to whip up some more of those herbivorous crocodyliforms so I can have one as a pet
The crocodile whips her tail
Water sluices from leather scales,
An eye pokes up out from the mire
Sighting the prey that’s her desire.It cannot run, it cannot hide
With the croc nearby its side.
Wariness now is quite futile
It can only wait to see what she’ll do.The time has come; her muscles coil
Springs from below, the water roils.
And so death comes in such a manner,
And with a leap, she eats bananner.Attenborough voice
The struggle is over. The crocodile has locked it’s mighty jaws around the defenceless prey. Silently, she slips her ancient body down beneath the inky water once more, dragging the mango to it’s doom.
Relevant poem, a little longer than I could post here, but fun to read:
https://marysenglishblog.com/2025/06/30/the-crocodile-and-the-monkey-a-poem-by-vikram-seth/
Interesting! But how do we know the crocs eat the fruit specifically as mineral or fiber supplement and not just for general sustenance, for the fun of death rolling a pumpkin, or “by accident”?
The sentence “it’s not by accident either” indicates clearly observable behaviour. I.e.: A croc needs potassium, then eats a banana. But how did the scientists observe this?
And how do the crocs know which fruit to eat? I guess for them to eat anything with the intention of being provided with minerals or fiber they need to know their fruits?
I have so many questions. I know bears know a lot about plants and some apes are known to use specific plants (as medicine even), but this is indicative of higher intelligence so I’d be curious to hear if anyone knows about how this works in primitive reptile brains.
There was a human study in the 1920s by Clara Davis where they followed a group of children in self led eating habits. They offered a range of healthy foods each day and let the kids choose what they ate - generally kids fed themselves a healthy diet with appropriate portions as long as the food offered was healthy. They would even eat fish oil voluntarily and maintained good vitamin D and omega 3 levels.
Now the author never had the opportunity to try it with processed foods or junk foods, so this may not hold true when items specifically formulated to keep you eating come into play. However, it’s entirely possible that the crocodile in the image has some instinct that drives it to eat a healthy diet. Or you’re correct, maybe it is playing and using the pumpkin as a toy, but it is unusual that it would consume it then
And how do the crocs know which fruit to eat?
Instinct i guess? The digestive tract is a chem lab that analyzes nutrient contents. You’ve eaten it once, you get a craving once you require something of it.
So they go around eating plants they don’t know to see if they like them and get a craving for them later? Doesn’t seem very crocodile-like
Well, at least human children do that.
With humans it’s the same (cravings), you need potassium & maybe crave a banana milkshake. If you explore your craving further, eg ask yourself if you would like to drink milk or eat a banana, it might get more clear what you need (it also helps exclude carbs bcs usually we don’t need them, but the self-preservation & long winters of the past usually means most humans don’t have much limit on carbs, bcs why not more of them, just to be safer). It’s a trained skill to some extent, especially in the modern era.
We associate nutrients with food tastes we get from our meals (which are usually a mixture of things & might even be wrong/false with ultra-processed foods).
I have no idea how this works in ancient crocks. Is it a learned (try all the foods when growing up?), observed (yo, why Silly Goose the neighbouring crock eating a jack-o’-lantern?), or “instinct” (ie only crocks that occasionally ate pumpkins survived)?
… especially given that even the current “true crocodiles” predate squash/pumpkins by 40+ million years :D.Yes I guess cravings are part of the “reptilian brain” (brain stem) in humans as well.
Funny to think crocs could crave banana’s. “Finally, gotta have some potassium after all these meats”.
There is no “reptile brain”. This is 1960s bad science.
Just ask them
Hehe, the cat we had when I grew up was completely and utterly obsessed with home made apple pie, she knew that she wasn’t supposed to get up on tables, and even fish or meat was something she could resist, but not home made apple pie.
Cats fucking adore butter. They don’t care for sugar or wheat, but they’ll go buck wild for butter. Sounds like you made proper pie!
Obligatory cat eating pumpkin with yum yum noises: https://youtube.com/shorts/fw8feygRqG4
She also loved olive oil, she would prefer ir over fish and eggs
My cat used to love whole olives.
You have a typo in your post. i think you ment “purrrr-fer”.
Mt cat’s nickname is “Butter Boy”. His only other vice is roasted chicken.
My big fat ginger loves cornbread and has once destroyed a cornmeal bag.
Okay, what about your cat?
My brothers cat was a feen for persimmon, the sister cat didn’t care for it at all
I think you mean “fiend.”
“Feen” is slang that means to want something obsessively or to have a strong desire for it.
fiend An evil spirit; a demon.
I guess both would be correct
Oh, what a good rabbit hole!
I use fiend in exactly the same way: “I’m fiending for a cigarette,” etc.
I actually did put fiend in originally but when I went to search to make sure it meant what I thought it meant it kept popping up as meaning something else, so I kept searching until I found feen haha
I mean, I’ve gotta assume that they’re related, but I’m always happy for a new variant.
I sweat all day at work, my cat LOVES when I come home as a fresh salt lick
don’t they eat like everything?
Fuck dude. I have worse eating habits than an overgrown lizard.
Funny thing about crocodilians, they look a bit lizardy, but theyre closer to birds than they are to lizards
They also taste like chicken, apparently.
Yeah, in think I remember them not being lizards but something close, right?
The other part of my comment is still true though.
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I think “overgrown lizard” is perfectly acceptable. You’re referring to their form, not ancestry ;)
An apple a day keeps the Croctor away.
Is that a giant banana
Very small croc.
How else do you think their species survived almost as long as sharks?
Wait! Do sharks eat pumpkins?
I think they’re obligate carnivores, at least I don’t know of any (There are a lot of things I don’t know, though.)
Ahh, so for the same reason my cat eats grass.
