Animal Diaries Archive

Digger comes to life

25 November 2005

For those of you who have read about Digger before, you are in for a real treat! For everyone else, here's a quick background check.

Basically Digger is a wild, very confident 12-and-a-half-foot crocodile taken from northern Queensland after being classed as a problem crocodile. He had been seen on multiple occasions hanging around a local boat ramp in Karumba, so it was decided he should be relocated. Lucky for the croc boys he was relocated to Australia Zoo, where he has lived since April this year.

Now like all our newly caught wild crocodiles, it took Digger a little while to settle in. He went from being a wild crocodile, roaming the riverways of Karumba at his leisure to being placed into a first class crocodile facility here at Australia Zoo. Although Digger had everything he needed, the cheeky, self-confident ways of Digger the Saltwater Crocodile went into hiding. The majority of our wild caught crocs take anywhere from six months to two years to snap out of things and have the confidence to act naturally around human activity, and to begin with Digger seemed no different to the others. He had, after all, gone through some pretty strange times; being caught in a trap and having around four hours of various road and sea transport to get him back to the Zoo. It's enough to put anyone out, really!

That was until October came around. To our amazement, Digger's usual skittish and nervous behaviour had turned around to be more of a curious, slightly more confident attitude. As each day passed, Digger showed more and more signs that he was regaining the confidence that saw him come to the Zoo in the first place. Not only was he beginning to stalk the croc boys around his enclosure, but also the white food buckets that all of our crocodiles here at Australia Zoo are fed from. It seemed it all finally made sense to him and there was no turning back.

Now, our crocodile keepers see Digger sunning every day and he shows no fear of human activity at all. The amazement doesn't stop there, however. When training our crocodiles to hand-feed for demonstrations, it generally takes them quite a while to realise they have to look up at the food to get fed. Not Digger though. This cheeky bloke hand-fed first time and hasn't taken a step back. The croc team is abuzz with the progression Digger has shown and can't wait to get this little champion out onto display. So do yourselves a favour and keep a good eye on our animal diary entries, because there is every chance Digger will be back in the headlines very soon.

Until next time,

Crocs RULE!