Trip to Kavumbe Zoo

Day trip to learn about some crocodile restraint:

The croc muzzles

Another project Pete was working on was designing a muzzle restraint device for handling large crocodilians. Most of these guys are much easier to handle once you have their dangerous mouth restrained. All the power a crocodile has on its bite are the jaw CLOSING muscles. But the muscles used to open its jaw are quite weak comparatively. So effectively keeping their jaw closed helps to restrain them and calm them down a lot. Normally, most people would use a wire snare to grasp onto the end of the jaw. This however, can cause problems if the person holding the snare tries to pull on it to manoeuvre the croc. The snare can begin to cut the skin around the jaw and cause a lot of stress, damage and pain for the croc. 

Demonstrated with ropes

Croc snared

Muzzle on

All restrained

She was pretty big...

The result

Pete thought a more humane way of handling them would also prove to be a lot safer for the handler. Bascially, the design of the muzzle is a cone shape that would fit snug around the mouth of the crocodile, also covering the eyes (reduces stress, because they cannot see what is going on) There would be two clasps on the end of the cone away from the croc's nose that would hook ropes to be used to pull the muzzle onto the mouth. Once on, the croc would be so much easier to handle. Pete chose to go to the Kavumbe Zoo, because their crocs were bigger than UWEC's, and he wanted to test the design on as large a croc as he could get. 






Results: The design of the device was fine. However, the flaw was in the make of the material. The muzzle was made of thick denim that was reinforced with a double stitch at the seams. But there was not much extra strength where the clasps punched through. So when Pete slipped the muzzle on, the pull that was needed to make sure it went on while fighting the thrashing head of the croc ripped the clasps right off the fabric. BUT, it still stayed on his head, which was a good thing. So only minor modifications needed to be made to the material. This was just a prototype and Pete wanted to try it in a controlled setting first, before trying it in the field. After the trial we headed back to UWEC, having to again pass through the crazy hustle and bustle of Kampala. That day especially, the air quality was extremely bad and I was really feeling it, but what can you do right?