Six tiny crocodiles have hatched out in the Zoo's Reptile House, from eggs laid on August 6th.

The first egg hatched on Sunday and the 6th egg has just hatched today.

Reptile Keeper Damien Goodall said ‘I heard them calling in the egg, because in the wild their calls would bring their mother back to the nest to help crack the eggs open. I assisted two of them that were having trouble hatching, just as their mother would in the wild.'

Their total body length is only about 11cm, but the six hatchlings are already mini versions of their parents, with the ability to deliver a painful nip.

They only weigh about 40grams at present. They won't need to eat for a week or two yet, because they absorbed so much nutrition from the rich yolk while they were still inside their eggs.

Even as adults, they will be relatively small, because they are Stone Country Crocodiles, native to Arnhem Land.

This species is a dwarf form of the Northern Territory Freshwater Crocodile. Adults reach only about 2m in length, compared to other freshwater crocodiles, which could be up to three metres long, still much smaller than saltwater crocs.

Reptile Keeper Damien Goodall explains that ‘this is an isolated population, which swam upstream long ago. They live along one stretch of the river system, surrounded by rocky escarpments, and the lack of food and relative lack of water there would also have affected their size over time.'

The clutch of five eggs spent 72 days in the Reptile House incubator, at a temperature of between 28 and 31degrees. This temperature range is calculated to produce a variation in sex, which is temperature-dependent.

The mother of this clutch came from the Liverpool River and was sent to the Zoo in 1980 by the Northern Territory Conservation Commission. The father arrived at the Zoo in 2007 from Crocodylus Wildlife Park in Darwin.

Photographs courtesy Damien Goodall