Never Smile at a Crocodile

Crocodiles in fiction (as well as alligators, caimans, and gharials) tend to be huge, green monsters always looking for the next meal, lurking in rivers, swamps and sometimes in castles' moats or sewers. They have the most powerful bite force of any modern animal,note and armored scales which make them hard to hurt. They also appear to be perpetually grinning, so they evoke the Slasher Smile. Furthermore, they're reptiles, which tends to make them even more despicable if possible. Worthy of note is the earlier comparison to the Threatening Shark. Whereas anyone knowledgeable about sharks can tell you how little Truth in Television there is in the way they're usually depicted in media, this trope is a bit more realistic. Unlike sharks, some species of large crocodilians will actively hunt people as a food source, and have no aversion to the taste of human flesh; in fact, crocodiles aren't picky at all, and will eat (and, with the most acidic stomachs of any animal, can digest) just about anything that moves. Works of fiction will still inevitably find ways of exaggerating these attributes, of course. In addition to their bite, their tails are strong enough to break bones when swung and they can use the rigid sides of their snouts as sledgehammers to deter aggressors and duel other crocodiles. In reality, crocodiles aren't as voracious or one-note brutal as fiction portrays them to be; at the longest, they've been known to go up to a year without actually eating anything, and generally spend their time basking in the sun most of the year or burying themselves in dirt and mud during winter. And when they do eat, sometimes, they just eat fruit.note They have extremely acute senses, particularly their sense of touch which can detect the smallest ripples on the surface of water, as well as powerful eyesight that can see every color we can and see in the dark like a cat, and their sense of smell which can detect scents above water from beneath water. They're also known to be as intelligent as, if not more than, a domestic dog; some crocodiles have been observed using twigs and sticks as bait to lure nesting birds close to the water and hunt by memorizing where prey is at the water's edge before submerging to approach. In the water, of course, crocodiles are effortlessly graceful and fast swimmers, able to swim three times as fast as humans note and jump completely out of the water to catch prey flying above. Crocodiles cannot chew their food; this is the reason for the so-called "death roll", the practice of turning themselves along their longitudinal axis while clinching their prey in their jaws in order to rip out chunks of flesh they can swallow whole.