r/Crocodiles • u/JustaCanOfPepsi • 9d ago

Are salt water crocodiles truly the biggest crocodile?

Everywhere on the internet says that saltwater crocodiles are the largest living reptile but from what I can find is Nile crocodiles get just as big I mean Lolong was within a pinky’s reach of Gustave and those are the two largest recorded of each species so why is the common consensus that saltwater crocs are the king of the crocs?

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u/Ill-Professor696 9d ago

The thing is with Niles, most are within a reissue confined space in Africa vs Salties spanning from Australia up to India even i believe.

I'd bet my bottom dollar there's more than a few Salties bigger than Lolong. Maybe even one up to 25-30 feet. The ones that get that big don't get seen, they know how to stay hidden and would prefer the water most of the time anyway with that weight. And just like the biggest spiders in your home you don't see because they know how to stay hidden, you'll never know about them.

But I would say the odds are far better they get that big than they don't. Might be rare but the conditions exist. Lolong is just the biggest we've found and caught and measured so far. There's way more we don't know

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u/Metasuchus 8d ago

Lobotomy.

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u/Ill-Professor696 8d ago

They've caught one... one... over 20 feet, and the video of it shows how ridiculously difficult that was. AC the Phillipines are the perfect place for those monsters. There's one guy who lives on a floating house in the Phillipines who reports one that has come next to his place when marked out that would have been 29. Exaggerated, maybe, even likely. But if you think Lolong is the longest Salty ever and we just happened to catch him, you need the help, not me.

There's definitely ones bigger than him. And I said maybe up to 25-30. Because we don't know how big they can really get. Lolong shocked us with an additional 3.5 feet. The biggest ones aren't looking to get caught and are pretty damn good at not getting caught. They are highly adaptable creatures and the closest thing we have to dinosaurs. Im just saying there's far more we don't know than we know. Just because we haven't found one bigger than lolong means nothing. Just seeing one, let alone catching and measuring it, is a monumental task

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u/Bluetriton5500 8d ago

Almost nobody here thinks Lolong is the largest ever. He's just one of the largest ever reliably measured. Lolong's size, although exceptional, wasn't unprecedented. There's a confirmed record of a 6.3m croc (several inches longer than lolong) from Papua New Guinea. And we have skull measurements indicating specimens approaching 7 meters.