It is one of the largest venom producing centre in India. The bank also has a snake farm, where they extract venom and make anti-venom. As I clicked away not wanting to touch the little slippery baby, the father-daughter duo tried handling and holding the little reptile feeling its spiny skin, small but sharp enough to scratch pointy teeth and soft yellowed belly. She was excited and scared all at once, to hold the baby crocodile. When we visited the bank in 2007, my daughter was a mere 8 year-old. That however, does not mean that we should not be alert about the danger lurking somewhere when we visit a lake or river…a natural territory of these reptiles!! The fun part is that since the reptiles are in separate enclosures, visitors can have a close look at them without compromising on safety. The centre also encourages visitors to handle baby crocodiles and alligators to understand and emphasise on conservation of ecosystem. It is important that we should not see crocodiles in their natural habitat as threat, but as guardians of river ecosystem. Lot of visitors flock to the Crocodile Conservation Centre of the bank which is the largest breeding centre in India. Need cleaning of my teeth….Any Bird around? This project was founded way back in 1976 by a German biologist Romulus Whitaker. The “ Crocodile Bank“at Mahabalipuram is one such endeavour to conserve and sustain environment. The dwindling natural habitat of crocodile due to construction, farming, mining etc besides hunting for crocodile hide has affected the population of crocodile and alligators as well and world-wide measures to prevent extinction of this beast of animal are in practice in many countries like Australia, USA and South East Asian countries. Crocodiles and alligators keep the rivers clean by eating carcasses of other species and balance the habitat population. Predators have an influential role in an ecosystem and are known as ‘keystone species’ because they keep a check on increasing number of other smaller animals. Nature has its own system of balancing the ecosystem….if there is increase in number of any one species, the balance goes for a toss. I remember, how I was surprised to hear about crocodile breeding….such dangerous animal, I had thought, why would anybody want them to increase in number? But I was very much wrong obviously! While I marvelled at the ingenious idea of Bangalore based NGO in bringing attention of civil authorities towards the dangerous pot-holed roads, by filling the pot-holes with life-like crocodiles and more recently Anaconda, I remembered one such visit to Crocodile Bank near Mahabalipuram, some 40 km from Chennai, Tamilnadu.
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