Do Crocadiles live in your sewer?

Question

Is the fable true? people used to flush baby lizards down their toilets so could they live on rats down there? who agrees with me?

Answer 1

I sure as heck hope not.... but you know what? my toilet is clogged up something fierce and I never put anything down there that would cause that....

If I ever get it unplugged.....

Thanks.... I won't be able to sit down without anxiety again...!! ;)

Answer 2

I'm sure someone somewhere has flushed a baby lizard down the toilet, however, for these people to do it so that the baby lizards could survive on rats....who knows. Crocodiles do not live in my sewer as far as I know. Is the fable true? If the conditions would be right. To agree with you...well, it wouldn't be the first time something odd has happened in a sewer.

Answer 3

An Urban Legend

It was once a fad among New Yorkers returning home from their Florida vacations to bring back baby alligators for their children to raise as pets. The baby crocs were destined to grow and outlive their cuteness, of course, at which point their chagrined owners would resort to flushing them down the toilet in order to get rid of them.

As the story goes, a few of these hastily disposed-of creatures actually survived in the dank Manhattan sewer system and proceeded to breed with one another, resulting in scattered colonies of full-grown alligators deep beneath the streets of New York City. Some say the animals are blind and albino, having lost their eyesight and the pigment in their hides due to the constant darkness in which they dwell.


Comments: If there is a grain of truth at the root of this legend, which has bedeviled New York City for the better part of a century, it's the documented capture of an eight-foot alligator down an East Harlem manhole in 1935.

Since it was discovered near the river, the best theory anyone could come up with at the time was that the creature had tumbled off a steamer "from the mysterious Everglades, or thereabouts." No one assumed it was a denizen of the sewer system.

The earliest published reference to the legend in what Jan Harold Brunvand calls its "standardized" form — "baby alligator pets, flushed, thrived in sewers" — can be found in Robert Daley's 1959 book, The World Beneath the City, a history of public utilities in New York City. Daley's primary source was a retired sewer official named Teddy May, who claimed that during the 1930s he investigated workers' reports of subterranean saurians and saw a colony of them with his own eyes. He also claimed to have personally seen to their eradication. May was a colorful storyteller if not a particularly reliable one.

Richard M. Dorson writes in America in Legend, published in 1973, that during the 1960s the alligator tale became associated with another bit of sewer lore, the legendary "New York White" marijuana, rumored to be an especially potent, albino strain of the drug descended from stashes hastily flushed down toilets during drug raids. Trouble was (or so the story went), no one was able to harvest the stuff because of all the alligators lurking down where it grew.

For the most part, herpetologists agree that city sewers do not provide the sort of environment in which alligators could long thrive, let alone reproduce. The species requires warm temperatures year around, they say, and would probably be susceptible to diseases caused by the bacteria found in sewage.

Answer 4

It was an urban myth that baby crocs were flushed down the toilets in New York in the 80s and they flourished in the sewers. I doubt there are any in the West Yorkshire area but I personally put a large turtles head down there this morning!!

Answer 5

???

1. Crocodiles and lizards are different things. Reptiles are divided into five types: Lizards, snakes, turtles, crocodilians and tuataras. Crocodiles are crocodilians, and lizards are of course lizards. A reptile of one type isn't just going to spontaneously transform into a reptile of another type just through eating (it's about as likely as you transforming into an elephant just by eating).
2. Unlike amphibians and fish, all reptiles must breathe air to survive. Flushing a reptile down a toilet would probably drown it.
3. Any lizard small enough to flush down a toilet won't be able to eat a whole rat by itself.

Conclusion: This 'fable' is a load of BS.

Answer 6

First off Crocodiles and lizards are two different things. Second crocodiles couldn't live in a sewer. They need heat and sun to digest their food properly. It's too dark and too cold in the sewers for them to survive.

Answer 7

Impossible! Crocs are reptiles and can not regulate their own internal temp like a rat could... their bodies would shut down from the low temps and the food intake amount is a bit different for a croc than a rat.

Answer 8

Not that I know of, although I hear tales of them being found in New York City - probably baby crocs being flushed down toilets by kids.

Answer 9

Don't listen to the others; they really do live in the sewer. If you sit on the toilet too long, they'll crawl back up the pipes and bite you in the bum.

Answer 10

Not since the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles ran them off.

Answer 11

I suspect with what I flush down mine, nothing could ever live down in my sewer.