page_title: Crocodilia
section_title: In literature
hierarchical_section_title: Crocodilia / Cultural depictions / In literature
caption_attribution_description: Illustration of a crocodile; detail of a miniature from the Rochester Bestiary, BL Royal 12 F xiii, f. 24r. Held and digitised by the British Library.
context_page_description: Crocodilia is an order of mostly large, predatory, semiaquatic reptiles, known as crocodilians. They first appeared 95 million years ago in the Late Cretaceous period and are the closest living relatives of birds, as the two groups are the only known survivors of the Archosauria. Members of the order's total group, the clade Pseudosuchia, appeared about 250 million years ago in the Early Triassic period, and diversified during the Mesozoic era. The order Crocodilia includes the true crocodiles, the alligators and caimans, and the gharial and false gharial. Although the term 'crocodiles' is sometimes used to refer to all of these, crocodilians is a less ambiguous vernacular term for members of this group.
  Large, solidly built, lizard-like reptiles, crocodilians have long flattened snouts, laterally compressed tails, and eyes, ears, and nostrils at the top of the head. They swim well and can move on land in a "high walk" and a "low walk", while smaller species are even capable of galloping. Their skin is thick and covered in non-overlapping scales. They have conical, peg-like teeth and a powerful bite.
context_section_description: Ancient historians have described crocodilians from the earliest historical records, though often their descriptions contain as much legend as fact. The Ancient Greek historian Herodotus (c. 440 BC) described the crocodile in detail, though much of his description is fanciful; he claimed that it would lie with its mouth open to permit a "trochilus" bird (possibly an Egyptian plover) to enter and remove any leeches it found. The crocodile was one of the beasts described in the late-13th century Rochester Bestiary, based on classical sources, including Pliny's Historia naturalis (c. 79 AD) and Isidore of Seville's Etymologies. Isidore asserts that the crocodile is named for its saffron colour (Latin croceus, 'saffron'), and that it is often twenty cubits (10 m (33 ft)) long. He further claimed that the crocodile may be killed by fish with serrated crests sawing into its soft underbelly, and that the male and female take turns guarding the eggs.
  Crocodiles have been reputed to weep for their victims since the 9th century Bibliotheca by Photios I of Constantinople. The story was repeated in later accounts such as that of Bartholomeus Anglicus in the 13th century. It became widely known in 1400 when the English traveller Sir John Mandeville wrote his description of "cockodrills":
  "In that country [of Prester John] and by all Ind [India] be great plenty of cockodrills, that is a manner of a long serpent, as I have said before. And in the night they dwell in the water, and on the day upon the land, in rocks and in caves. And they eat no meat in all the winter, but they lie as in a dream, as do the serpents. These serpents slay men, and they eat them weeping; and when they eat they move the over jaw, and not the nether jaw, and they have no tongue."
  Crocodilians, especially the crocodile, have been recurring characters in stories for children throughout the modern era. Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1865) contains the poem How Doth the Little Crocodile, a parody of a moralising poem by Isaac Watts, Against Idleness and Mischief.
  In J. M. Barrie's novel Peter and Wendy (1911), the character Captain Hook has lost his hand to the crocodile. Hook fears the crocodile, but is warned of its approach by the ticking of a clock which it has swallowed.
  In Rudyard Kipling's Just So Stories (1902), the Elephant's Child acquires his trunk by having his (short) nose pulled very hard by the Crocodile "on the banks of the great grey-green, greasy Limpopo River". The newly elongated nose allows him to pick fruit instead of waiting for it to fall, and to do many other useful things. Roald Dahl's The Enormous Crocodile (1978), illustrated by Quentin Blake, tells how a crocodile wanders the jungle looking for children to eat, trying one trick after another. In Andrew Fusek Peters' story book, Monkey's Clever Tale, a crocodile is tricked by a monkey. The monkey asks the crocodile to carry it across a river, promising to give its tail to eat in return, but escaped with the tail intact.
caption: Crocodile in the mediaeval Rochester Bestiary, late 13th century
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