These seagoing creatures are as dangerous, if not more so, than their swamp orriented cousins.
Unique among crocodilians, these massive, sea-going reptiles are no longer sole dependenton their lungs. Through some quirk of evolution,these once estuary dwellers were endowed with gills eons ago, enabling them to leave the muddy waters of the mudflats and venture out into the vast blue waters of the ocean,long the preserve of ravenous sharks.
Now they are as much a part of the ocean's eco-system as its other denizens. Making their homes in lush coral-reefs teeming with every imaginable kind of marine life,they dwell hidden among the living shoals,their odd turquoise hide enabling them to blend in among the blue corals that sprouts everywhere, and lie in wait for some unwary victim to stray too close to their ambush spot,moving quickly to grab it with their powerful toothy jaws. Big enough to devour just about anything,they are not fastidious eaters and will just about choose to eat any living creature,be it an overly curious crab or an unwary reef-shark.
And at times, each other. As delightfully cannibalistic as their fellow crocodilians of other species,giant males will attack any of their own kind that stray into the spot of prime reef that they have marked out as their domain. Hatchlings and incautious juveniles often suffer a heavy toll as the large males consider them to be easy pickings. Only the wisest and most effective hunters among the brood of these saurians,survive to become adults,thereby ensuring that the Ocean Crocodile retains its spot as one of the top predators of the ocean.
So much so,that in some places where they have either been accidently introduced through an unwitting oversight on the part of man, or invaded aggresively though their own accord, they have devastated native shark populations, pushing many of them towards the edge of extinction. Though the latter are often powerful hunters in their own right,there is nothing they can do against a creature that sometimes push twenty-five feet when fully grown. Only the rare and fabled ''whale killing'' White Shark can challenge the dominance of the Ocean Crocodile.
Genuine sightings of conflict between the two levethians have been very rare, since both are usually careful to stay well out of the path of the other,but when they do occur, they are fearsome and awesome spectacles. Legend even has it that the the bustling port city of Surabuya is actually the old Agorian word for ''sea lizard'' ,and was named by its founders in honor of a particularly humongous Ocean Crocodile that attacked and devoured a White Shark close to the bay where they city now stands.
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Maggot, you really need to add a single space after every comma and period. Thank you.
*cue theme from Jaws*
Nifty.
I think I need more details. It's a big crocodile and you write about how it kicks shark butt, however you don't describe all the evolutions it would need to survive well in the ocean. Sharks are very well designed to do their job, and a croc would need some changes I think to compete.
Also, this is currently listed as being by Moonhunter, but I think was actually written by Maggot.(?)
good now, could be made better. May I suggest some real-world 'salt water crocodile' fun facts for further referrence/inspiration.
Indeed, the style of this is more maggot then moonhunter.
I like the idea of it, though the idea that gills could remerge puts this firmly in the Fantasy realm.