You might expect the whirring blades of a helicopter to spark concern or annoyance from animals in the vicinity. But for the reptilian residents of a crocodile farm, a low-flying chopper seemed to signal mating season.
“All the males got to their feet and began roaring and bellowing at the skies. After the helicopters had left, they started mating like crazy,” John Lever told ABC ..
It is not clear why the Chinook helicopter riled up the crocs. Experts suspect that the crocs may have mistook it for a storm. That’s right, thunderstorms really get crocs riled up.
Crocodilian courtship
October and November are spring months for Australia and are typical mating periods for the country’s saltwater crocodiles. It’s also the rainy season, when thunderstorms are common for parts of the continent.
“Usually, mating is a seasonal thing because [crocodiles] want to coincide with the best time to lay their eggs in a burrow or nest,” herpetologist Mark O’Shea from the University of Wolverhampton told Live Science.
Mating during the stormy season means that when females lay their eggs weeks later, the weather is usually less severe so their eggs will have a lower risk of drowning in a flood.
So the timing seemed right, and the sound and vibrations from the chopper may have mimicked a thunderstorm signaling to the male crocs that it was go time. It is possible that the motion of the Chinook blades caused barometric changes similar to storms.
Or, another theory, is that the crocodiles may have mistaken the helicopter’s roar for the bellows and splashing tails of other males, O’Shea said.
Whatever the cause, the next step will be for the female crocodiles to make nests for their eggs. Using soil and rotting vegetation, they create mounds where dozens of eggs incubate.
Over the course of about three months, the mothers then aggressively protect their eggs.
Lever’s farm has about 3,000 of the reptiles, which he raises for their meat and leather and as a tourist attraction.
The post A helicopter sparked a massive crocodile mating sex frenzy when they probably mistook the sound for a giant thunderstorm appeared first on Business Insider.
