Crocodile

A crocodile (family Crocodylidae) or true crocodile is a large, semiaquatic reptile that lives throughout the tropics in Africa, Asia, the Americas and Australia. The term "crocodile" is sometimes used more loosely to include all extant members of the order Crocodilia, which includes the alligators and caimans (both members of the family Alligatoridae), the gharial and false gharial (both members of the family Gavialidae) as well as other extinct taxa.

Crocodile size, morphology, behaviour and ecology differ among species. However, they have many similarities in these areas as well. All crocodiles are semiaquatic and tend to congregate in freshwater habitats such as rivers, lakes, wetlands and sometimes in brackish water and saltwater. They are carnivorous animals, feeding mostly on vertebrates such as fish, reptiles, birds and mammals, and sometimes on invertebrates such as molluscs and crustaceans, depending on species and age. All crocodiles are tropical species that, unlike alligators, are very sensitive to cold. Many species are at the risk of extinction, some being classified as critically endangered.

The word crocodile (croc.) was derived during the Middle English period from the transliteration krokódilos of a Greek word which translates as "stones worm". Through Ancient Greece the English language word has developed from Grecian origination in Anatolia.

A very early extant Ancient Greek source is an Aesop's Fable named Ἀλώπηξ καὶ κροκόδειλος of the sixth century BC. Herodotus a century after in consideration of the Greek word thought it was from the Ionic period.

The Latin language word crocodilus existed in first century AD in the work Naturalis Historia of Pliny the Elder. Examples in writing in the sixth and seventh century AD, crocodillorum and crocodili existed, though corcodrillus and cocodrillus were forms in Medieval Latin. The Latin form is found as cocodrille c. the 13th century in the Old French work Li livres dou tresor, in which the croc. is jaune (yellow).

The earliest known source in the English language is within the work Kyng Alisaunder from towards the beginning of the 14th century, a magical romance poetry work of rhyming couplets, where the word is found line 5720:

Writing sometime after 1483 on his visit to the Holy Lands Felix Fabri in German and Latin mentions the Cocodrillen and cocodrillos respectively. By 1538 the exact same form of the modern word as the current English is found in French; croc. is within a poem of Edmund Spenser, thought written in 1579–80, and in the works of William Shakespeare, who died in 1616. The similitude of the English word formation to a Latin source was caused at least by the transmission of a relevant ancient science from the influx of the publication of translations of Pliny the Elder some time towards the end of fourteenth and, or, beginning of fifteenth century. The publication of concrete realization in the anatomical work of Andreas Vesalius during 1543 inspired the creation of monographs and books of animals contributing to new science in zoology.

Crocodylidae was named as a family by Georges Cuvier in 1807. It belongs to the larger superfamily Crocodyloidea, which also includes additional extinct crocodile relatives. These all belong to the order Crocodilia, which also includes alligators and gharials.