Jumping crocodiles

What do you do if every tourist has seen a crocodile – after all they’re a dime-a-dozen everywhere you look? The answer is simple. You ‘train’ wild crocodiles to ‘jump’. On our first full day in the Top End Garry and I stopped to witness this spectacle for ourselves. We joined a one-hour boat cruise on the Adelaide River, 65 kms south of Darwin.

The tour operator we used has two boats on the river; one is a tiny nine-metre flat-bottom boat, the other, an eighteen metre vessel. Initially we were herded on to the smaller boat, however, several last-minute arrivals saw us exceed its carrying capacity and we were transferred to the larger one. Given all that we later saw, I’m secretly grateful to those latecomers.


Within minutes of departing the shore, a large crocodile could be seen approaching the boat. Over time, four daily cruises have trained these animals to seek out the boat. It represents a guaranteed meal. The engine is first dropped to an idle while a feeding staff member baits a rod with a chunk of water buffalo meat. The crocodile is then ‘teased’ with this tasty offering until it leaps out of the water to grab the bait.


The sight of these three and four metre animals launching themselves into the air, jaws open wide is nothing short of spectacular. We were told it take several months to gain the trust of each animal, to the point that they will jump for food. The jump itself is actually the equivalent of a vertical swim as the animal propels itself up to two metres out of the water.

As you can imagine, the practice of teaching crocodiles to jump has attracted considerable controversy. Even more so as more and more operators get in on the game. Detractors argue that we’re simply encouraging these animals to approach humans and possibly teaching them to make a meal of anything dangling over the edge of a boat. However, it’s hard not to be impressed by a 4.5 metre male crocodile shooting into the air, a single all-too-close metre from your open-air vantage point. Somehow, the last-minute swap to a larger boat seemed a very sensible decision!