Meet the Freshwater crocodile
The freshwater crocodile is endemic to northern Australia. Its long, narrow snout is built for snatching fish, frogs and other small prey with a quick sideways snap, which makes it easy to tell apart from the broad-headed saltwater crocodile.
Unlike salties, freshies nest in the dry season, digging holes in sandbars and laying an average of about 13 eggs. Some populations living in food-poor upstream waters are stunted, with adults much smaller and lighter than those downstream.
Its scientific name honours Robert Arthur Johnstone, a Queensland native police officer and amateur naturalist who supplied specimens. When Gerard Krefft described it in 1873 he misspelled the name as 'johnsoni', and both spellings were used for decades before johnstoni was accepted as correct.
Freshies are not considered dangerous like salties and no human deaths are known, but they will bite if cornered or handled. The spread of poisonous cane toads has caused serious local declines in some Northern Territory populations.
Where it lives
Found only in tropical northern Australia, across northern Western Australia, the Northern Territory and Queensland. It lives mainly in freshwater rivers, creeks, billabongs and escarpment plunge pools upstream of tidal water.