By Jim Berrie from WN.com

In a second incident of deadly violence against zoo animals in a week, visitors to a zoo in Tunisia’s capital stoned a crocodile to death on Tuesday, IFL Science reported.

The incident happened Tuesday at Belvedere Zoo in the capital Tunis, where, for no apparent reason, visitors threw rocks and paving slabs at the defenseless animal. The zoo was temporarily closed following the incident.

The municipality of Tunis decided to post the gory images of the “brutal behavior” on its Facebook page, adding that the crocodile died directly due to the attack causing an internal hemorrhage. It is believed the attackers have not been caught.

“It’s terrible. You cannot imagine what the animals endure from some visitors. Citizens leave waste and plastic bags… They throw stones at lions and hippos. There are more than 150 species in the zoo. We can’t put a guard in front of each cage. People need to be aware of the need to respect animals.” – Amor Ennaifer

“It’s terrible. You cannot imagine what the animals endure from some visitors. Citizens leave waste and plastic bags… They throw stones at lions and hippos. There are more than 150 species in the zoo. We can’t put a guard in front of each cage. People need to be aware of the need to respect animals.”

This same zoo made headlines last year after photographs popped up online showing animal enclosures filled with plastic bottles, cigarette butts, and food packets. The zoo’s director at the time brushed off the criticism, saying it was only in that condition because the zoo becomes extra-busy during school holidays and weekends.

This incident comes just days after the beloved hippopotamus Gustavito died after being stabbed and beaten by intruders at a zoo in El Salvador.

Crocodiles (subfamily Crocodylinae) or true crocodiles are large aquatic reptiles that live throughout the tropics in Africa, Asia, the Americas and Australia. Crocodylinae, all of whose members are considered true crocodiles, is classified as a biological subfamily. A broader sense of the term crocodile, Crocodylidae that includes Tomistoma, is not used in this article. The term crocodile here applies only to the species within the subfamily of Crocodylinae. The term is sometimes used even more loosely to include all extant members of the order Crocodilia, which includes Tomistoma, the alligators and caimans, the gharials, and all other living and fossil Crocodylomorpha.

Although they appear to be similar to the untrained eye, crocodiles, alligators and the gharial belong to separate biological families. The gharial having a narrow snout is easier to distinguish, while morphological differences are more difficult to spot in crocodiles and alligators. The most obvious external differences are visible in the head with crocodiles having narrower and longer heads, with a more V-shaped than a U-shaped snout compared to alligators and caimans. Another obvious trait is that the upper and lower jaws of the crocodiles are the same width, and the teeth in the lower jaw fall along the edge or outside the upper jaw when the mouth is closed; therefore, all teeth are visible unlike an alligator; which possesses small depressions in the upper jaw, into which the lower teeth fit. Also, when the crocodile’s mouth is closed, the large fourth tooth in the lower jaw fits into a constriction in the upper jaw. For hard-to-distinguish specimens, the protruding tooth is the most reliable feature to define the family that the species belongs to. Crocodiles have more webbing on the toes of the hind feet and can better tolerate saltwater due to specialized salt glands for filtering out salt, which are present but non-functioning in alligators. Another trait that separates crocodiles from other crocodilians is their much higher levels of aggression.

For more on this story go to: https://article.wn.com/view/2017/03/03/Tunisian_Zoo_Closed_After_Visitors_Stone_Crocodile_To_Death/