The huge saltwater crocodile named Elvis—who lives at the Australian Reptile Park in New South Wales—had three teeth growing the wrong way, causing an abscess. Keepers restrained the reptile in order to remove them, but he was “not happy about it,” park operations manager Billy Collett says in a video. The huge reptile woke up during surgery, thrashing his head around.
Elvis first came to the park in 2007, and has never been captured since.
Elvis has a reputation for being a particularly cranky crocodile. He came to the park after he caused havoc attacking boats in his natural habitat in Darwin. After arriving at the park, the crocodile ate two of his mating partners. In an infamous incident in 2011, Elvis stole a lawnmower that was being used in his enclosure. The crocodile lunged at the mower and stole it from two park keepers. After that, he guarded it and refused to give it back. The keepers lured the crocodile away with meat
As a “massive half-tonne saltwater crocodile,” the surgery was “one of the biggest challenges they’d ever faced,” the park said on Facebook. It would be a “dangerous task,” the park said.
Collett says in the video that the growing pattern of the crocodile’s tooth was “really unusual.”
Keepers used a muscle relaxer on Elvis to ensure he was as relaxed as possible but that didn’t stop him from waking up during the procedure. After the veterinarian removed the first tooth, they noticed two others that were causing problems for the reptile on an x-ray.
Elvis woke up and began to thrash once the second one was removed. Keepers piled on top of the crocodile to restrain him. But as he is so “powerful”, he was still able to thrash around, Collett says.
Lauren Mann, marketing assistant at Australian Reptile Park, told Newsweek: “Elvis is doing great since the operation! As we do with any operation, our Keepers have been monitoring him and everything is healing quite nicely.”
While the keepers had him restrained, they took the rare opportunity to examine his size. “While we’ve got him held up, we’re going to take the opportunity to do a big heath check,” Collett said. “Turns out he is actually [15 feet] which is huge.”
Saltwater crocodiles are native to Australia and have a reputation for being more aggressive than their freshwater relatives. Although they do not usually attack when provoked, the huge creatures are capable of inflicting damage if they feel threatened.
Do you have an animal or nature story to share with Newsweek? Do you have a question about crocodiles? Let us know via nature@newsweek.com.
