Are crocodiles in Indonesia playing dead to lure humans?

By January 16, 2025 Science

We came across the posts on the following topic on the social media platform X, Instagram and YouTube. It was also said to be going viral on TikTok on some response videos:

The images show what appears to be a crocodile or similar animal in a body of water. The animal appears to be belly up, with its arms flailing above the water surface. The camera then turns away from the crocodile to a tanned man on a nearby pier.

The video is accompanied by an audio voiceover that describes the animal in the water as a saltwater crocodile in Indonesia. While we found several versions of the video, including some in other languages, the claims that accompanied the footage remained consistent.

The voiceover claims that the crocodiles had learnt how to pretend to be drowning people to lure humans into the water whom they would then eat.

One version of the video on YouTube claimed that tourists were at risk as they would jump into the water in an effort to rescue what they thought were drowning people.

The claim was also reported on some minor Indian news sites with no track records of credibility.

Cause of Crocodile Attacks

We conducted a search on the status of saltwater crocodiles in Indonesia and found that the country’s territory was indeed one of the most important habitats for the species and were a protected species in the country.

The saltwater crocodile could historically be found across Indonesia, though they had been killed off across most densely inhabited parts of the country by the mid-20th century. This means that one is no longer likely to come across one in places like Jakarta or Bali.

Indonesia also has the highest crocodile attack rate in the world, with about 150 attacks and 85 deaths each year. However, these deaths were not found to be due to crocodiles using newly gained powers of deception.

Experts assessed that the high rates of crocodile attacks were linked to areas where illegal tin mines tended to proliferate, such as in the Indonesian Bangka-Belitung islands or Papua and West Papua.

Illegal mines destroy the crocodile habitats and deplete the stocks of fish and other prey that crocodiles rely on to survive. In addition, old, flooded mines known as ‘kulongs’ continue to attract miners and fill with crabs and fish, along with livestock and people who use the water, attracting crocodiles deprived of prey and their natural habitats.

Crocodile Tears and Legs

When we looked up the ‘fake drowning’ behaviour of the crocodiles, we found that it had been debunked by experts, who affirmed that it was likely an unintentional result of a natural behaviour.

Yahoo News Australia, which reported that the video was filmed in the Barito River in Borneo, quoted Brandon Sideleau, a researcher of human and crocodile conflict at Charles Darwin University, as saying that there was a likely explanation for the behaviour.

Sideleau said that the crocodile probably had prey in its mouth and was spinning in the water to subdue its prey, during which its legs, which appear like human hands or arms, could be seen protruding from the water surface.

Sideleau, who was also quoted in the article linking crocodile attacks to illegal tin mining, added that though crocodiles are more intelligent than we might expect, they did not have the intelligence required to mimic human behaviour to attract prey.

Other experts interviewed by Yahoo News Australia and Newsweek corroborated Sideleau’s assessment. Different possible reasons offered by the experts were that the crocodile had its tail caught, preventing it from swimming normally, or neurological problems.

As such, we find the claim that saltwater crocodiles in Indonesia are pretending to be drowning to lure human prey to be false.

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