Animal profile

West African Crocodile

Crocodylus suchus

ReptiliaRivers, lakes, seasonal pools and desert gueltas

Field profile

The West African or desert crocodile is a smaller, generally less aggressive relative of the Nile crocodile, recognised as a separate species in 2011. It ranges across West Africa and includes isolated populations surviving in desert rock pools. Some West African communities have long treated it as sacred.

Published field notes

2025-10-25

West African Crocodile

Egypt's mummified crocodiles were the sacred species

Genetic work on mummies and museum specimens showed that the crocodile most often kept in temples and mummified in ancient Egypt was not the Nile crocodile but a separate, smaller and more tractable species, formally recognised in 2011.

Read with evidence →