Zoo snaps up family of well-travelled crocs

Swimming with a creature that might consider you a nice snack is not to everyone’s taste but it’s just a day at the office for James Hennessy, who runs the Reptile Village Zoo in Kilkenny.

James, 38, has been handling reptiles since his teenage years and, apart from running the zoo, lecturing, and doing television and film work, he travels the world helping to conserve the creatures.

His latest acquisition is a family of saltwater crocodiles. It took eight months of planning and overcoming a lot of red tape to complete their transfer from Butterfly Creek Zoo in New Zealand.

“They originally imported six crocodile eggs from Australia with the hopes that one would hatch and could be used for educational talks,” James explains.

They got more than they bargained for as, after 60 days, they managed to hatch out all six baby crocs. The solution to this oversupply came last year when one of the staff from Butterfly Creek visited James’s zoo.

“She offered to transfer the crocs to Ireland to be put on exhibit here,” James says. “They were flown from Auckland to Sydney, then onto Abu Dhabi, London, and finally Dublin — the longest known transfer of any crocodile in the world.”

Saltwater crocodiles are the largest reptiles in the world, with adults reaching lengths of over 6m and weighing over 1,000kg. In the wild, they eat everything from fish to birds and large mammals, and are frequently known to attack and eat humans.

Reptile Village Zoo will keep two of the six crocs. James claims they “won’t see me as a food source, but more as just another crocodile”.