A female Nile crocodile digs a nest chamber in a sandy bank and stays nearby for an incubation of roughly ninety days. As hatching approaches the young call from inside the eggs, and the female excavates the clutch in response to the sound.
She then gathers hatchlings, sometimes several at a time, into the gular pouch on the floor of her mouth and carries them to shallow water. Crocodilian jaws have enormous closing force but very weak opening muscles, and closing pressure is finely graded, so the same apparatus can hold a hatchling barely thirty centimetres long intact. Some females also help stubborn eggs open by rolling them between tongue and palate.
The extent of parental care is frequently overstated. Guarding of the young typically persists for weeks rather than the many months sometimes claimed, and hatchling mortality stays extremely high regardless. How long crèches remain associated with an adult varies between populations and is poorly quantified.