title: Gloucestershire

text: Witcombe Festival is an annual music festival held in Brockworth. As well as music, the three-day festival has it roots deep in cider. The festival consists of four stages and has been headlined by Dizzee Rascal, Plan B, Sigma, Ella Eyre, Example, Wiley, Heather Small, Lethal Bizzle and Tinchy Stryder.


title: Gloucestershire

text: The Romano/Celtic temple ruins in Lydney Park contributed to J.R.R. Tolkien's description of The Shire in his Middle-earth Legendarium.


title: Gloucestershire

text: The famous Gloucestershire Old Spots pig is named for Gloucestershire and is historically associated with the county. Sheep roam widely in the Forest of Dean. The Forest of Dean and the Wye Valley also have wild boar.


title: Gloucestershire

text: Gloucester cattle, a rare breed, can still be found in and around Gloucestershire. They can be recognised by the white stripe that runs down the centre of their backs to the tip of their tails. The cattle are famous for producing milk for both Single Gloucester and Double Gloucester cheeses.


title: Gloucestershire

text: Rudder, Samuel. (1779) "A New History of Gloucestershire". Reprint: Nonsuch Publishing, 2006. (Free download of original here: "")


title: Prison

text: A prison, also known as a jail, gaol (dated, standard English, Australian, and historically in Canada), penitentiary (American English and Canadian English), detention center (or detention centre outside the US), correction center, correctional facility, lock-up, hoosegow or remand center, is a facility in which inmates (or prisoners) are confined against their will and usually denied a variety of freedoms under the authority of the state as punishment for various crimes. Prisons are most commonly used within a criminal justice system: people charged with crimes may be imprisoned until their trial; those pleading or being found guilty of crimes at trial may be sentenced to a specified period of imprisonment. In simplest terms, a prison can also be described as a building in which people are legally held as a punishment for a crime they have committed.


title: Prison

text: Prisons can also be used as a tool of political repression by authoritarian regimes. Their perceived opponents may be imprisoned for political crimes, often without trial or other legal due process; this use is illegal under most forms of international law governing fair administration of justice. In times of war, prisoners of war or detainees may be detained in military prisons or prisoner of war camps, and large groups of civilians might be imprisoned in internment camps.


title: Prison

text: In American English, the terms "prison" and "jail" have separate definitions, though this is not always strictly adhered to in casual speech. A "prison" or "penitentiary" holds people for longer periods of time, such as many years, and is operated by a state or federal government. A "jail" holds people for shorter periods of time (e.g. for shorter sentences or pre-trial detention) and is usually operated by a local government, typically the county sheriff. Outside of North America, "prison" and "jail" often have the same meaning.


title: Prison

text: Some Ancient Greek philosophers, such as Plato, began to develop ideas of using punishment to reform offenders instead of simply using it for its own sake. Imprisonment as a penalty was used initially for those who could not afford to pay their fines. Eventually, since impoverished Athenians could not pay their fines, leading to indefinite periods of imprisonment, time limits were set instead. The prison in ancient Athens was known as the "desmoterion" ("place of chains").


title: Prison

text: The Romans were among the first to use prisons as a form of punishment rather than simply for detention. A variety of existing structures were used to house prisoners, such as metal cages, basements of public buildings, and quarries. One of the most notable Roman prisons was the Mamertine Prison, established around 640 B.C. by Ancus Marcius. The Mamertine Prison was located within a sewer system beneath ancient Rome and contained a large network of dungeons where prisoners were held in squalid conditions, contaminated with human waste. Forced labor on public works projects was also a common form of punishment. In many cases, citizens were sentenced to slavery, often in ergastula (a primitive form of prison where unruly slaves were chained to workbenches and performed hard labor).


title: Prison

text: In Medieval Songhai, results of a trial could have led to confiscation of merchandise or imprisonment as a form of punishment, since various prisons existed in the empire.


title: Prison

text: During the Middle Ages in Europe, castles, fortresses, and the basements of public buildings were often used as makeshift prisons. The possession of the right and the capability to imprison citizens, however, granted an air of legitimacy to officials at all levels of government, from kings to regional courts to city councils; and the ability to have someone imprisoned or killed served as a signifier of who in society possessed power or authority over others. Another common punishment was sentencing people to galley slavery, which involved chaining prisoners together in the bottoms of ships and forcing them to row on naval or merchant vessels.


title: Prison

text: The influence of French philosopher Michel Foucault, especially his book "" (1975), has energized the historical study of prisons and their role in the overall social system. "Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison" is an analysis of the social and theoretical mechanisms behind the changes that occurred in Western penal systems during the modern age based on historical documents from France. Foucault argues that prison did not become the principal form of punishment just because of the humanitarian concerns of reformists. He traces the cultural shifts that led to the predominance of prison via the body and power. Prison used by the "disciplines" – new technological powers that can also be found, according to Foucault, in places such as schools, hospitals, and military barracks.


title: Prison

text: From the late 17th century and during the 18th century, popular resistance to public execution and torture became more widespread both in Europe and in the United States. Particularly under the Bloody Code, with few sentencing alternatives, imposition of the death penalty for petty crimes, such as theft, was proving increasingly unpopular with the public; many jurors were refusing to convict defendants of petty crimes when they knew the defendants would be sentenced to death. Rulers began looking for means to punish and control their subjects in a way that did not cause people to associate them with spectacles of tyrannical and sadistic violence. They developed systems of mass incarceration, often with hard labor, as a solution. The prison reform movement that arose at this time was heavily influenced by two somewhat contradictory philosophies. The first was based in Enlightenment ideas of utilitarianism and rationalism, and suggested that prisons should simply be used as a more effective substitute for public corporal punishments such as whipping, hanging, etc. This theory, referred to as "deterrence", claims that the primary purpose of prisons is to be so harsh and terrifying that they deter people from committing crimes out of fear of going to prison. The second theory, which saw prisons as a form of "rehabilitation" or "moral reform", was based on religious ideas that equated crime with sin, and saw prisons as a place to instruct prisoners in Christian morality, obedience and proper behavior. These later reformers believed that prisons could be constructed as humane institutions of moral instruction, and that prisoners' behavior could be "corrected" so that when they were released, they would be model members of society.


title: Prison

text: The concept of the modern prison was imported to Europe in the early 19th-century. Prior forms of punishment were usually physical, including capital punishment, mutilation, flagellation (whipping), branding, and non-physical punishments, such as public shaming rituals (like the stocks). From the Middle Ages up to the 16th and 17th centuries in Europe, imprisonment was rarely used as a punishment in its own right, and prisons were mainly to hold those awaiting trial and convicts awaiting punishment.


title: Prison

text: However, an important innovation at the time was the Bridewell House of Corrections, located at Bridewell Palace in London, which resulted in the building of other houses of correction. These houses held mostly petty offenders, vagrants, and the disorderly local poor. In these facilities the inmates were given "prison labor" jobs that were anticipated to shape them into hardworking individuals and prepare them for the real world. By the end of the 17th century, houses of correction were absorbed into local prison facilities under the control of the local justice of the peace.


title: Prison

text: England used penal transportation of convicted criminals (and others generally young and poor) for a term of indentured servitude within the general population of British America between the 1610s and 1776. The Transportation Act 1717 made this option available for lesser crimes, or offered it by discretion as a longer-term alternative to the death penalty, which could theoretically be imposed for the growing number of offenses in Britain. The substantial expansion of transportation was the first major innovation in eighteenth-century British penal practice. Transportation to America was abruptly suspended by the Criminal Law Act 1776 (16 Geo. 3 c.43) with the start of the American Rebellion. While sentencing to transportation continued, the act instituted a punishment policy of hard labour instead. The suspension of transport also prompted the use of prisons for punishment and the initial start of a prison building program. Britain would resume transportation to specifically planned penal colonies in Australia between 1788 and 1868.


title: Prison

text: Jails at the time were run as business ventures, and contained both felons and debtors; the latter were often housed with their wives and younger children. The jailers made their money by charging the inmates for food, drink, and other services, and the system was generally corruptible. One reform of the seventeenth century was the establishment of the "London Bridewell" as a house of correction for women and children. It was the first facility to make any medical services available to prisoners.


title: Prison

text: With the widely used alternative of penal transportation halted in the 1770s, the immediate need for additional penal accommodations emerged. Given the undeveloped institutional facilities, old sailing vessels, termed "hulks", were the most readily available and expandable choice to be used as places of temporary confinement. While conditions on these ships were generally appalling, their use and the labor thus provided set a precedent which persuaded many people that mass incarceration and labor were viable methods of crime prevention and punishment. The turn of the 19th century would see the first movement toward prison reform, and by the 1810s, the first state prisons and correctional facilities were built, thereby inaugurating the modern prison facilities available today.


title: Prison

text: France also sent criminals to overseas penal colonies, including Louisiana, in the early 18th century. Penal colonies in French Guiana operated until 1952, such as the notable Devil's Island ("Île du Diable"). Katorga prisons were harsh work camps established in the 17th century in Russia, in remote underpopulated areas of Siberia and the Russian Far East, that had few towns or food sources. Siberia quickly gained its fearful connotation of punishment.


title: Prison

text: John Howard was one of the most notable early prison reformers. After having visited several hundred prisons across Great Britain and Europe, in his capacity as high sheriff of Bedfordshire, he published "The State of the Prisons" in 1777. He was particularly appalled to discover prisoners who had been acquitted but were still confined because they could not pay the jailer's fees. He proposed wide-ranging reforms to the system, including the housing of each prisoner in a separate cell and the requirements that staff should be professional and paid by the government, that outside inspection of prisons should be imposed, and that prisoners should be provided with a healthy diet and reasonable living conditions. The prison reform charity, the Howard League for Penal Reform, was established in 1866 by his admirers.


title: Prison

text: Following Howard's agitation, the Penitentiary Act was passed in 1779. This introduced solitary confinement, religious instruction, a labor regime, and proposed two state penitentiaries (one for men and one for women). However, these were never built due to disagreements in the committee and pressures from wars with France, and jails remained a local responsibility. But other measures passed in the next few years provided magistrates with the powers to implement many of these reforms, and eventually, in 1815, jail fees were abolished.


title: Prison

text: Quakers were prominent in campaigning against and publicizing the dire state of the prisons at the time. Elizabeth Fry documented the conditions that prevailed at Newgate prison, where the ladies' section was overcrowded with women and children, some of whom had not even received a trial. The inmates did their own cooking and washing in the small cells in which they slept on straw. In 1816, Fry founded a prison school for the children who were imprisoned with their parents. She also began a system of supervision and required the women to sew and to read the Bible. In 1817, she helped to found the Association for the Reformation of the Female Prisoners in Newgate.


title: Prison

text: The theory of the modern prison system was born in London, influenced by the utilitarianism of Jeremy Bentham. Bentham's panopticon introduced the principle of observation and control that underpins the design of the modern prison. The notion of prisoners being incarcerated as part of their punishment and not simply as a holding state until trial or hanging, was at the time revolutionary. His views influenced the establishment of the first prisons used as criminal rehabilitation centers. At a time when the implementation of capital punishment for a variety of relatively trivial offenses was on the decline, the notion of incarceration as a form of punishment and correction held great appeal to reform-minded thinkers and politicians.


title: Prison

text: In the first half of the 19th century, capital punishment came to be regarded as inappropriate for many crimes that it had previously been carried out for, and by the mid-19th century, imprisonment had replaced the death penalty for the most serious offenses except for murder.


title: Prison

text: The first state prison in England was the Millbank Prison, established in 1816 with a capacity for just under 1,000 inmates. By 1824, 54 prisons had adopted the disciplinary system advocated by the SIPD. By the 1840s, penal transportation to Australia and the use of hulks was on the decline, and the Surveyor-General of convict prisons, Joshua Jebb, set an ambitious program of prison building in the country, with one large prison opening per year. Pentonville prison opened in 1842, beginning a trend of ever increasing incarceration rates and the use of prison as the primary form of crime punishment. Robert Peel's Gaols Act of 1823 introduced regular visits to prisoners by chaplains, provided for the payment of jailers and prohibited the use of irons and manacles.


title: Prison

text: In 1786, the state of Pennsylvania passed a law that mandated that all convicts who had not been sentenced to death would be placed in penal servitude to do public works projects such as building roads, forts, and mines. Besides the economic benefits of providing a free source of hard labor, the proponents of the new penal code also thought that this would deter criminal activity by making a conspicuous public example of consequences of breaking the law. However, what actually ended up happening was frequent spectacles of disorderly conduct by the convict work crews, and the generation of sympathetic feelings from the citizens who witnessed the mistreatment of the convicts. The laws quickly drew criticism from a humanitarian perspective (as cruel, exploitative and degrading) and from a utilitarian perspective (as failing to deter crime and delegitimizing the state in the eyes of the public). Reformers such as Benjamin Rush came up with a solution that would enable the continued use of forced labor while keeping disorderly conduct and abuse out of the eyes of the public. They suggested that prisoners be sent to secluded "houses of repentance" where they would be subjected (out of the view of the public) to "bodily pain, labor, watchfulness, solitude, and silence ... joined with cleanliness and a simple diet".


title: Prison

text: Pennsylvania soon put this theory into practice, and turned its old jail at Walnut Street in Philadelphia into a state prison, in 1790. This prison was modeled on what became known as the "Pennsylvania system" (or "separate system"), and placed all prisoners into solitary cells with nothing other than religious literature, made them wear prison uniforms, and forced them to be completely silent to reflect on their wrongs. New York soon built the Newgate state prison in Greenwich Village, which was modeled on the Pennsylvania system, and other states followed.


title: Prison

text: But, by 1820, faith in the efficacy of legal reform had declined, as statutory changes had no discernible effect on the level of crime, and the prisons, where prisoners shared large rooms and booty including alcohol, had become riotous and prone to escapes. In response, New York developed the Auburn system in which prisoners were confined in separate cells and prohibited from talking when eating and working together, implementing it at Auburn State Prison and Sing Sing at Ossining. The aim of this was rehabilitative: the reformers talked about the penitentiary serving as a model for the family and the school and almost all the states adopted the plan (though Pennsylvania went even further in separating prisoners). The system's fame spread and visitors to the U.S. to see the prisons included de Tocqueville who wrote "Democracy in America" as a result of his visit.


title: Prison

text: The use of prisons in Continental Europe was never as popular as it became in the English-speaking world, although state prison systems were largely in place by the end of the 19th century in most European countries. After the unification of Italy in 1861, the government reformed the repressive and arbitrary prison system they inherited, and modernized and secularized criminal punishment by emphasizing discipline and deterrence. Italy developed an advanced penology under the leadership of Cesare Lombroso (1835–1909).


title: Prison

text: Another prominent prison reformer who made important contributions was Alexander Paterson who advocated for the necessity of humanizing and socializing methods within the prison system in Great Britain and America.


title: Prison

text: Prisons employ people to run and maintain the prison while keeping control of the inmates. Oftentimes, the number of people employed within a prison depends upon factors such as the size of the prison, how many inmates the prison has, and how much funding the prison gets.


title: Prison

text: Security staff, also known as prison guards, are enforcement officials who are in charge of enforcing prison rules among the inmates. Thus they are responsible for the care, custody and control of the prison.


title: Prison

text: Teachers are employed to provide education for inmates to use after their release, in order to reduce the likelihood of the inmates reoffending.


title: Prison

text: Case managers are people who perform correctional casework in an institutional setting; develop, evaluate, and analyze program needs and other data about inmates; evaluate progress of individual offenders in the institution; coordinate and integrate inmate training programs; develop social histories; evaluate positive and negative aspects in each case situation, and develop release.


title: Prison

text: Prison counselors are people who are employed to intervene therapeutically with various clients, the majority of whom happen to be offenders. These interventions include prison adjustment, prerelease and postrelease vocational and marital/family readjustment, and work with adolescent adjustment problems.


title: Prison

text: The medical workers are doctors and nurses who are tasked with providing the inmates with healthcare.


title: Prison

text: A work release supervisor is someone who is tasked with monitoring inmates outside of the prison during a work release program.


title: Prison

text: In private prisons, contractors are people who paid the prison for the use of prison labor and supplied the prisoners with work.


title: Prison

text: Prisons also provide religious workers to meet the religious need for inmates. Religious workers are also in charge of the weddings when inmates marry someone outside the prison.


title: Prison

text: In addition to the prison staff, inmates are often tasked with doing work around the jail such as cooking food for the other inmates or providing cleaning services around the prison.


title: Prison

text: Prisons are normally surrounded by fencing, walls, earthworks, geographical features, or other barriers to prevent escape. Multiple barriers, concertina wire, electrified fencing, secured and defensible main gates, armed guard towers, security lighting, motion sensors, dogs and roving patrols may all also be present depending on the level of security.


title: Prison

text: Remotely controlled doors, CCTV monitoring, alarms, cages, restraints, nonlethal and lethal weapons, riot-control gear and physical segregation of units and prisoners may all also be present within a prison to monitor and control the movement and activity of prisoners within the facility.


title: Prison

text: Modern prison designs have increasingly sought to restrict and control the movement of prisoners throughout the facility and also to allow a smaller prison staff to monitor prisoners directly, often using a decentralized "podular" layout. (In comparison, 19th-century prisons had large landings and cell blocks which permitted only intermittent observation of prisoners.) Smaller, separate and self-contained housing units known as "pods" or "modules" are designed to hold 16 to 50 prisoners and are arranged around exercise yards or support facilities in a decentralized "campus" pattern. A small number of prison officers, sometimes a single officer, supervise each pod. The pods contain tiers of cells arranged around a central control station or desk from which a single officer can monitor all the cells and the entire pod, control cell doors and communicate with the rest of the prison.


title: Prison

text: Pods may be designed for high-security "indirect supervision", in which officers in segregated and sealed control booths monitor smaller numbers of prisoners confined to their cells. An alternative is "direct supervision", in which officers work within the pod and directly interact with and supervise prisoners, who may spend the day outside their cells in a central "dayroom" on the floor of the pod. Movement in or out of the pod to and from exercise yards, work assignments or medical appointments can be restricted to individual pods at designated times and is generally centrally controlled. Goods and services, such as meals, laundry, commissary, educational materials, religious services and medical care can increasingly be brought to individual pods or cells as well. Some modern prisons may exclude certain inmates from the general population, usually for safety reasons, such as those within solitary confinement, celebrities, political figures and former law enforcement officers, those convicted of sexual crimes and/or crimes against children, or those on the medical wing or protective custody.


title: Prison

text: Generally, when an inmate arrives at a prison, they go through a security classification screening and risk assessment that determines where they will be placed within the prison system. Classifications are assigned by assessing the prisoner's personal history and criminal record, and through subjective determinations made by intake personnel (which include mental health workers, counselors, clerical staff, sheriff deputies, prison unit managers, and others). This process will have a major impact on the prisoner's experience, determining their security level, educational and work programs, mental health status (e.g. the determination of whether they will be placed in a mental health unit), and many other factors. This sorting of prisoners is one of the fundamental techniques through which the prison administration maintains control over the inmate population and attempts to reduce risks and liabilities in an attempt to create an orderly and secure prison environment. At some prisons, prisoners are made to wear a prison uniform.


title: Prison

text: The levels of security within a prison system are categorized differently around the world, but tend to follow a distinct pattern. At one end of the spectrum are the most secure facilities ("maximum security"), which typically hold prisoners that are considered dangerous, disruptive or likely to try to escape. Furthermore, in recent times, supermax prisons have been created where the custody level goes beyond maximum security for people such as terrorists or political prisoners deemed a threat to national security, and inmates from other prisons who have a history of violent or other disruptive behavior in prison or are suspected of gang affiliation. These inmates have individual cells and are kept in lockdown, often for more than 23 hours per day. Meals are served through "chuck-holes" in the cell door, and each inmate is allotted one hour of outdoor exercise per day, alone. They are normally permitted no contact with other inmates and are under constant surveillance via closed-circuit television cameras.


title: Prison

text: On the other end are "minimum security" prisons which are most often used to house those for whom more stringent security is deemed unnecessary. For example, prisoners convicted of white-collar crime (which rarely results in incarceration) are almost always sent to minimum-security prisons due to them having committed nonviolent crimes. Lower-security prisons are often designed with less restrictive features, confining prisoners at night in smaller locked dormitories or even cottage or cabin-like housing while permitting them free movement around the grounds to work or partake in activities during the day. Some countries (such as Great Britain) also have "open" prisons where prisoners are allowed home-leave or part-time employment outside of the prison. Suomenlinna Island facility in Finland is an example of one such "open" correctional facility. The prison has been open since 1971 and, as of September 2013, the facility's 95 male prisoners leave the prison grounds on a daily basis to work in the corresponding township or commute to the mainland for either work or study. Prisoners can rent flat-screen televisions, sound systems, and mini-refrigerators with the prison-labor wages that they can earn—wages range between 4.10 and €7.30 per hour. With electronic monitoring, prisoners are also allowed to visit their families in Helsinki and eat together with the prison staff. Prisoners in Scandinavian facilities are permitted to wear their own clothes.


title: Prison

text: There are fundamental differences between the security level of men's prisons and that of women's prisons. Male prisons tend to have higher, or more severe, security levels/classifications than female prisons. This is even noticeable when comparing the construction and design of male prisons which tend to have very tall walls and towers, barbed wire and other serious security measures whereas these types of high level security measures are absent at many female prisons. This is due to multiple factors including females being convicted of less severe offences, and being less likely to be convicted of violent offences, in comparison to males, and due to female prisoners being less likely to be violent than male prisoners.


title: Prison

text: Modern prisons often hold hundreds or thousands of inmates, and must have facilities onsite to meet most of their needs, including dietary, health, fitness, education, religious practices, entertainment, and many others. Conditions in prisons vary widely around the world, and the types of facilities within prisons depend on many intersecting factors including funding, legal requirements, and cultural beliefs/practices. Nevertheless, in addition to the cell blocks that contain the prisoners, there are also certain auxiliary facilities that are common in prisons throughout the world.


title: Prison

text: Prisons generally have to provide food for a large number of individuals, and thus are generally equipped with a large institutional kitchen. There are many security considerations, however, that are unique to the prison dining environment. For instance, cutlery equipment must be very carefully monitored and accounted for at all times, and the layout of prison kitchens must be designed in a way that allows staff to observe activity of the kitchen staff (who are usually prisoners). The quality of kitchen equipment varies from prison to prison, depending on when the prison was constructed, and the level of funding available to procure new equipment. Prisoners are often served food in a large cafeteria with rows of tables and benches that are securely attached to the floor. However, inmates that are locked in control units, or prisons that are on "lockdown" (where prisoners are made to remain in their cells all day) have trays of food brought to their cells and served through "chuck-holes" in the cell door. Prison food in many developed countries is nutritionally adequate for most inmates.


title: Prison

text: Prisons in wealthy, industrialized nations provide medical care for most of their inmates. Additionally, prison medical staff play a major role in monitoring, organizing, and controlling the prison population through the use of psychiatric evaluations and interventions (psychiatric drugs, isolation in mental health units, etc.). Prison populations are largely from poor minority communities that experience greater rates of chronic illness, substance abuse, and mental illness than the general population. This leads to a high demand for medical services, and in countries such as the US that don't provide tax-payer funded healthcare, prison is often the first place that people are able to receive medical treatment (which they couldn't afford outside).


title: Prison

text: Some prison medical facilities include primary care, mental health services, dental care, substance abuse treatment, and other forms of specialized care, depending on the needs of the inmate population and the willingness of the prison to provide for these needs. Health care services in many prisons have long been criticized as inadequate, underfunded, and understaffed, and many prisoners have experienced abuse and mistreatment at the hands of prison medical staff who are entrusted with their care.


title: Prison

text: In the United States, a million incarcerated people suffer from mental illness without any assistance or treatment for their condition. The tendency of a convicted criminal to reoffend, known as the rate of recidivism, is unusually high for those with the most serious disorders. Analysis of data in 2000 from several forensic hospitals in California, New York and Oregon found that with treatment the rate of recidivism was "much lower" than untreated mentally ill offenders.


title: Prison

text: Some prisons provide educational programs for inmates that can include basic literacy, secondary education, or even college education. Prisoners seek education for a variety of reasons, including the development of skills for after release, personal enrichment and curiosity, finding something to fill their time, or trying to please prison staff (which can often secure early release for good behavior). However, the educational needs of prisoners often come into conflict with the security concerns of prison staff and with a public that wants to be "tough on crime" (and thus supports denying prisoners access to education). Whatever their reasons for participating in educational programs, prison populations tend to have very low literacy rates and lack of basic mathematical skills, and many have not completed secondary education. This lack of basic education severely limits their employment opportunities outside of prison, leading to high rates of recidivism, and research has shown that prison education can play a significant role in helping prisoners reorient their lives and become successful after reentry.


title: Prison

text: Many prisons also provide a library where prisoners can check out books, or do legal research for their cases. Often these libraries are very small, consisting of a few shelves of books. In some countries, such as the United States, drastic budget cuts have resulted in many prison libraries being shut down. Meanwhile, many nations that have historically lacked prison libraries are starting to develop them. Prison libraries can dramatically improve the quality of life for prisoners, who have large amounts of empty time on their hands that can be occupied with reading. This time spent reading has a variety of benefits including improved literacy, ability to understand rules and regulations (leading to improved behavior), ability to read books that encourage self-reflection and analysis of one's emotional state, consciousness of important real-world events, and education that can lead to successful re-entry into society after release.


title: Prison

text: Many prisons provide limited recreational and fitness facilities for prisoners. The provision of these services is controversial, with certain elements of society claiming that prisons are being "soft" on inmates, and others claiming that it is cruel and dehumanizing to confine people for years without any recreational opportunities. The tension between these two opinions, coupled with lack of funding, leads to a large variety of different recreational procedures at different prisons. Prison administrators, however, generally find the provision of recreational opportunities to be useful at maintaining order in the prisons, because it keeps prisoners occupied and provides leverage to gain compliance (by depriving prisoners of recreation as punishment). Examples of common facilities/programs that are available in some prisons are: gyms and weightlifting rooms, arts and crafts, games (such as cards, chess, or bingo), television sets, and sports teams. Additionally, many prisons have an outdoor recreation area, commonly referred to as an "exercise yard".


title: Prison

text: Most prisoners are part of the "general population" of the prison, members of which are generally able to socialize with each other in common areas of the prison. A ' or ' (also called a "block" or "isolation cell") is a highly secure area of the prison, where inmates are placed in solitary confinement to isolate them from the general population. Other prisoners that are often segregated from the general population include those who are in protective custody, or who are on suicide watch, and those whose behavior presents a threat to other prisoners.


title: Prison

text: In addition to the above facilities, others that are common include prison factories and workshops, visiting areas, mail rooms, telephone and computer rooms, a prison store (often called a "canteen") where prisoners can purchase goods with prison commissary. Some prisons have a death row where prisoners who have been sentenced to death await execution and an execution room, where the death sentence is carried out. In places like Singapore and Malaysia, there is place for corporal punishment (carried out by caning).


title: Prison

text: Prisons for juveniles are known by a variety of names, including "youth detention facilities", "juvenile detention centers", and "reformatories". The purpose of youth detention facilities is to keep young offenders away from the public, while working towards rehabilitation. The idea of separately treating youthful and adult offenders is a relatively modern idea. The earliest known use of the term "juvenile delinquency" was in London in 1816, from where it quickly spread to the United States. The first juvenile correctional institution in the United States opened in 1825 in New York City. By 1917, juvenile courts had been established in all but 3 states. It was estimated that in 2011 more than 95,000 juveniles were locked up in prisons and jails in the United States (the largest youth prisoner population in the world). Besides prisons, many other types of residential placement exist within juvenile justice systems, including youth homes, community-based programs, training schools and boot camps.


title: Prison

text: Like adult facilities, youth detention centers in some countries are experiencing overcrowding due to large increases in incarceration rates of young offenders. Crowding can create extremely dangerous environments in juvenile detention centers and juvenile correctional facilities. Overcrowding may also lead to the decrease in availability to provide the youth with much needed and promised programs and services while they are in the facility. Many times the administration is not prepared to handle the large number of residents and therefore the facilities can become unstable and create instability in simple logistics.


title: Prison

text: In addition to overcrowding, juvenile prisons are questioned for their overall effectiveness in rehabilitating youth. Many critics note high juvenile recidivism rates, and the fact that the most of the youths that are incarcerated are those from lower socio-economic classes (who often suffer from broken families, lack of educational/job opportunities, and violence in their communities).


title: Prison

text: In the 19th century, a growing awareness that female prisoners had different needs to male prisoners led to the establishment of dedicated prisons for women. In modern times, it is the norm for female inmates to be housed in either a separate prison or a separate wing of a unisex prison. The aim is to protect them from physical and sexual abuse that would otherwise occur.


title: Prison

text: In the Western world, the guards of women's prisons are usually female, though not always. For example, in federal women's correction facilities of the United States, 70% of guards are male. Rape and sexual offenses remain commonplace in many women's prisons, and are usually underreported. Two studies in the late 2000s noted that because a high proportion of female inmates have experienced sexual abuse in the past, they are particularly vulnerable to further abuse.


title: Prison

text: The needs of mothers during pregnancy and childbirth often conflict with the demands of the prison system. The Rebecca Project, a non-profit organization that campaigns for women's rights issues, reports that "In 2007, the Bureau of Justice Statistics stated that, on average, 5% of women who enter into state prisons are pregnant and in jails [local prisons] 6% of women are pregnant". The standard of care that female prisoners receive before and after giving birth is often far worse than the standard expected by the general population, and sometimes almost none is given. In some countries, female prisoners may be restrained while giving birth. In many countries including the United States, mothers will frequently be separated from their baby after giving birth.


title: Prison

text: Research has shown a significant link between females in prison and brain injury which supports research that shows incarcerated females are overwhelmingly victims of domestic violence (mainly male violence against women).


title: Prison

text: Prisons have formed parts of military systems since the French Revolution. France set up its system in 1796. They were modernized in 1852 and since their existence, are used variously to house prisoners of war, unlawful combatants, those whose freedom is deemed a national security risk by military or civilian authorities, and members of the military found guilty of a serious crime. Military prisons in the United States have also been converted to civilian prisons, to include Alcatraz Island. Alcatraz was formerly a military prison for soldiers during the American Civil War.


title: Prison

text: In the American Revolution, British prisoners held by the U.S. were assigned to local farmers as laborers. The British kept American sailors in broken down ship hulks with high death rates.


title: Prison

text: In the Napoleonic wars, the broken down hulks were still in use for naval prisoners. One French surgeon recalled his captivity in Spain, where scurvy, diarrhea, dysentery, and typhus abounded, and prisoners died by the thousands:


title: Prison

text: In the American Civil War, at first prisoners of war were released, after they promised not to fight again unless formally exchanged. When the Confederacy refused to exchange black prisoners the system broke down, and each side built large-scale POW camps. Conditions in terms of housing, food, and medical care were bad in the Confederacy, and the Union retaliated by imposing harsh conditions.


title: Prison

text: By 1900 the legal framework of the Geneva and Hague Convention provided considerable protection. In the First World War, millions of prisoners were held on both sides, with no major atrocities. Officers received privileged treatment. There was an increase in the use of forced labor throughout Europe. Food and medical treatment were generally comparable to what active duty soldiers received, and housing was much better than front-line conditions.


title: Prison

text: Political prisoners are people who have been imprisoned because of their political beliefs, activities and affiliations. There is much debate about who qualifies as a "political prisoner". The category of "political prisoner" is often contested, and many regimes that incarcerate political prisoners often claim that they are merely "criminals". Others who are sometimes classified as "political prisoners" include prisoners who were politicized in prison, and are subsequently punished for their involvement with political causes.


title: Prison

text: Many countries maintain or have in the past had a system of prisons specifically intended for political prisoners. In some countries, dissidents can be detained, tortured, executed, and/or "disappeared" without trial. This can happen either legally, or extralegally (sometimes by falsely accusing people and fabricating evidence against them).


title: Prison

text: "Administrative detention" is a classification of prisons or detention centers where people are held without trial.


title: Prison

text: Some psychiatric facilities have characteristics of prisons, particularly when confining patients who have committed a crime and are considered dangerous. In addition, many prisons have psychiatric units dedicated to housing offenders diagnosed with a wide variety of mental disorders. The United States government refers to psychiatric prisons as "Federal Medical Centers (FMC)".


title: Prison

text: In 2010, the International Centre for Prison Studies that at least 10.1 million people were imprisoned worldwide.


title: Prison

text: Not all countries have experienced a rise in prison population: Sweden closed four prisons in 2013 due to a significant drop in the number of inmates. The head of Sweden's prison and probation services characterized the decrease in the number of Swedish prisoners as "out-of-the-ordinary", with prison numbers in Sweden falling by around 1% a year since 2004.


title: Prison

text: The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime website hosts data regarding prison populations around the world, including "Persons held - by sex, by age group," "Persons held - by status and sex" and "Prison capacity and overcrowding - totals".


title: Prison

text: In the United States alone, more than $74 billion per year is spent on prisons, with over 800,000 people employed in the prison industry. As the prison population grows, revenues increase for a variety of small and large businesses that construct facilities, and provide equipment (security systems, furniture, clothing), and services (transportation, communications, healthcare, food) for prisons. These parties have a strong interest in the expansion of the prison system since their development and prosperity directly depends on the number of inmates.<ref name="http://www.nij.gov/journals/259/prison-privatization.htm"></ref>


title: Prison

text: The prison industry also includes private businesses that benefit from the exploitation of the prison labor. Some scholars, using the term prison-industrial complex, have argued that the trend of "hiring out prisoners" is a continuation of the slavery tradition, pointing out that the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution freed slaves but allowed forced labor for people convicted of crimes. Prisons are very attractive to employers, because prisoners can be made to perform a great array of jobs, under conditions that most free laborers wouldn't accept (and would be illegal outside of prisons): sub-minimum wage payments, no insurance, no collective bargaining, lack of alternative options, etc. Prison labor can soon deprive the free labor of jobs in a number of sectors, since the organized labor turns out to be uncompetitive compared to the prison counterpart.


title: Prison

text: Prisons can be difficult places to live and work in, even in developed countries in the present day. By their very definition, prisons house individuals who may be prone to violence and rule-breaking. It is also typical that a high proportion of inmates have mental health concerns. A 2014 US report found that this included 64% of local jail inmates, 54% of state prisoners and 45% of federal prisoners. The environment may be worsened by overcrowding, poor sanitation and maintenance, violence by prisoners against other prisoners or staff, staff misconduct, prison gangs, self-harm, and the widespread smuggling of illegal drugs and other contraband. The social system within the prison commonly develops an "inmate code", an informal set of internal values and rules that govern prison life and relationships, but that may be at odds with the interests of prison management or external society, compromising future rehabilitation. In some cases, disorder can escalate into a full-scale prison riot. Academic research has found that poor conditions tend to increase the likelihood of violence within prisons.


title: Prison

text: Prisoners can face difficulty re-integrating back into society upon their release. They often have difficulty finding work, earn less money when they do find work, and experience a wide range of medical and psychological issues. Many countries have a high recidivism rate. According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, 67.8% of released prisoners in the United States are rearrested within three years and 76.6% are rearrested within five years. If the prisoner has a family, they are likely to suffer socially and economically from their absence.


title: Prison

text: If a society has a very high imprisonment rate, these effects become noticeable not just on family units, but also on entire poor communities or communities of color. The expensive cost of maintaining a high imprisonment rate also costs money that must come at the expense of either the taxpayer or other government agencies.


title: Prison

text: A variety of justifications and explanations are put forth for why people are imprisoned by the state. The most common of these are:


title: Prison

text: Academic studies have been inconclusive as to whether high imprisonment rates reduce crime rates in comparison to low imprisonment rates; only a minority suggest it creates a significant reduction, and others suggest it increases crime.


title: Prison

text: Prisoners are at risk of being drawn further into crime, as they may become acquainted with other criminals, trained in further criminal activity, exposed to further abuse (both from staff and other prisoners) and left with criminal records that make it difficult to find legal employment after release. All of these things can result in a higher likelihood of reoffending upon release.


title: Prison

text: This has resulted in a series of studies that are skeptical towards the idea that prison can rehabilitate offenders. As Morris and Rothman (1995) point out, "It's hard to train for freedom in a cage." A few countries have been able to operate prison systems with a low recidivism rate, including Norway and Sweden. On the other hand, in many countries including the United States, the vast majority of prisoners are rearrested within 3 years of their release. Prison reform organizations such as the Howard League for Penal Reform are not entirely opposed to attempting to rehabilitate offenders, but instead argue that most prisoners would be more likely to be rehabilitated if they received a punishment other than prison.


title: Prison

text: The National Institute of Justice argues that offenders can be deterred by the fear of being caught but are unlikely to be deterred by the fear or experience of the punishment. Like Lawrence W. Sherman, they argue that better policing is a more effective way to reduce crime rates.


title: Prison

text: The argument that prisons can reduce crime through incapacitation is more widely accepted, even among academics who doubt that prisons can rehabilitate or deter offenders. A dissenting argument from Arrigo and Milovanovic, who argue that prisoners will simply continue to victimize people inside of the prison and that this harm has impacts on the society outside.


title: Prison

text: Modern prison reform movements generally seek to reduce prison populations. A key goal is to improve conditions by reducing overcrowding. Prison reformers also argue that alternative methods are often better at rehabilitating offenders and preventing crime in the long term. Among the countries that have sought to actively reduce prison populations include Sweden, Germany and the Netherlands.


title: Prison

text: The prison abolition movement seeks to eliminate prisons altogether. It is distinct from prison reform, although abolitionists often support reform campaigns, regarding them as incremental steps towards abolishing prisons. The abolition movement is motivated by a belief that prisons are inherently ineffective and discriminatory. The movement is associated with libertarian socialism, anarchism and anti-authoritarianism, with some prison abolitionists arguing that imprisoning people for actions the state designates as crimes is not only inexpedient but also immoral.


title: Super Size Me

text: Super Size Me is a 2004 American documentary film directed by and starring Morgan Spurlock, an American independent filmmaker. Spurlock's film follows a 30-day period from February 1 to March 2, 2003, during which he ate only McDonald's food. The film documents the drastic effect on Spurlock's physical and psychological health and well-being. It also explores the fast food industry's corporate influence, including how it encourages poor nutrition for its own profit and gain.


title: Super Size Me

text: Spurlock ate at McDonald's restaurants three times a day, eating every item on the chain's menu at least once. Spurlock consumed an average of 20.9 megajoules or 5,000 kcal (the equivalent of 9.26 Big Macs) per day during the experiment. He also walked about 2 kilometers (1.5 miles) a day. An intake of around 2,500 kcal within a healthy balanced diet is more generally recommended for a man to maintain his weight. As a result, the then-32-year-old Spurlock gained , a 13% body mass increase, increased his cholesterol to 230 mg/dL (6.0 mmol/L), and experienced mood swings, sexual dysfunction, and fat accumulation in his liver. It took Spurlock fourteen months to lose all the weight gained from his experiment using a vegan diet supervised by his then-girlfriend, a chef who specializes in gourmet vegan dishes.


title: Super Size Me

text: The reason for Spurlock's investigation was the increasing spread of obesity throughout U.S. society, which the Surgeon General has declared an "epidemic", and the corresponding lawsuit brought against McDonald's on behalf of two overweight girls, who, it was alleged, became obese as a result of eating McDonald's food "(Pelman v. McDonald's Corp., 237 F. Supp. 2d 512)". Spurlock argued that, although the lawsuit against McDonald's failed (and subsequently many state legislatures have legislated against product liability actions against producers and distributors of "fast food") as well as the McLibel case, much of the same criticism leveled against the tobacco companies applies to fast food franchises whose product is both physiologically addictive and physically harmful.


title: Super Size Me

text: The documentary was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature and won Best Documentary Screenplay from the Writers Guild of America. A comic book related to the movie has been made with Dark Horse Comics as the publisher containing stories based on numerous cases of fast food health scares.


title: Super Size Me

text: As the film begins, Spurlock is in above average physical shape according to his personal trainer. He is seen by three physicians (a cardiologist, a gastroenterologist, and a general practitioner), as well as a nutritionist and a personal trainer. All of the health professionals predict the "McDiet" will have unwelcome effects on his body, but none expected anything too drastic, one citing the human body as being "extremely adaptable". Prior to the experiment, Spurlock ate a varied diet but always had vegan evening meals to accommodate his girlfriend, Alexandra, a vegan chef. At the beginning of the experiment, Spurlock, who stood tall, had a body weight of .


title: Super Size Me

text: On February 1, Spurlock starts the month with breakfast near his home in Manhattan, where there is an average of four McDonald's locations (and 66,950 residents, with twice as many commuters) per square mile (2.6 km²). He aims to keep the distances he walks in line with the 5,000 steps (approximately two miles) walked per day by the average American.


title: Super Size Me

text: Day 2 brings Spurlock's first (of nine) Super Size meal, at the McDonald's on 34th Street and Tenth Avenue, which is a meal made of a Double Quarter Pounder with Cheese, Super Size French fries, and a 42-ounce Coca-Cola, which took him 22 minutes to eat. He experiences steadily increasing stomach discomfort during the process, and then finally vomits in the McDonald's parking lot.


title: Super Size Me

text: After five days Spurlock has gained (from 185.5 to about 195 pounds). It is not long before he finds himself experiencing depression, and he claims that his bouts of it along with lethargy, and headaches could be relieved by eating a McDonald's meal. His general practitioner describes him as being "addicted". At his second weigh-in, he had gained another , putting his weight at . By the end of the month he weighs about , an increase of about 24.5 pounds (about 11 kg). Because he could only eat McDonald's food for a month, Spurlock refused to take any medication at all. At one weigh-in, Spurlock "lost" 1 lb. from the previous weigh-in, and a nutritionist hypothesized that he had lost muscle mass, which weighs more than an identical volume of fat. At another weigh-in, a nutritionist said that he gained in 12 days.


title: Super Size Me

text: Spurlock's then-girlfriend, Alexandra Jamieson, attests to the fact that Spurlock lost much of his energy and sex drive during his experiment. It was not clear at the time whether or not Spurlock would be able to complete the full month of the high-fat, high-carbohydrate diet, and family and friends began to express concern.


title: Super Size Me

text: On Day 21, Spurlock has heart palpitations. His internist, Dr. Daryl Isaacs, advises him to stop what he is doing immediately to avoid any serious health problems. He compares Spurlock with the protagonist played by Nicolas Cage in the movie "Leaving Las Vegas", who intentionally drinks himself to death in a matter of weeks. Despite this warning, Spurlock decides to continue the experiment.


title: Super Size Me

text: On March 2, Spurlock makes it to day 30 and achieves his goal. In thirty days, he has "Supersized" his meals nine times along the way (five of which were in Texas, four in New York City). His physicians are surprised at the degree of deterioration in Spurlock's health. He notes that he has eaten as many McDonald's meals as most nutritionists say the ordinary person should eat in eight years (he ate 90 meals, which is close to the number of meals consumed once a month in an eight-year period).


title: Super Size Me

text: The documentary's end text states that it took Spurlock five months to lose and another nine months to lose the last . His then-girlfriend Alex, now his ex-wife, began supervising his recovery with her "detox diet", which became the basis for her book, "The Great American Detox Diet".


title: Super Size Me

text: The movie ends with a rhetorical question, "Who do you want to see go first, you or them?" This is accompanied by a cartoon tombstone, which reads "Ronald McDonald (1954–2012)", which originally appeared in "The Economist" in an article addressing the ethics of marketing to children.


title: Super Size Me

text: A short epilogue was added to the film. It showed that the salads can contain even more calories than burgers if the customer adds liberal amounts of cheese and dressing prior to consumption. Also, it described McDonald's discontinuation of the Super Size option six weeks after the movie's premiere, as well as its recent emphasis on healthier menu items such as salads, and the release of the new adult Happy Meal. McDonald's denied that these changes had anything to do with the film.


title: Super Size Me

text: "Super Size Me" premiered at the 2004 Sundance Film Festival, where Morgan Spurlock won the Grand Jury Prize for directing the film. The film opened in the U.S. on May 7, 2004, and grossed a total of $11,536,423 worldwide, making it the 22nd highest-grossing documentary film of all time. It was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature, but lost to the film "Born into Brothels." It did, however, win the award for Best Documentary Screenplay from the Writers Guild of America.


title: Super Size Me

text: The film received overall positive reviews from critics and audiences. It holds a 92% "Certified Fresh" rating on the film review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes based on 171 reviews, with an average rating of 7.73/10. The consensus calls the film an "entertaining doc about the adverse effects of eating fast food." Metacritic assigned the film a weighted average score of 73 out of 100, based on 37 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews".


title: Super Size Me

text: "Super Size Me" received two thumbs up on "At the Movies with Ebert and Roeper". Caroline Westbrook for "BBC News" stated that the hype for the documentary was proper "to a certain extent", because of its serious message, and that, overall, the film's "high comedy factor and over-familiarity of the subject matter render it less powerful than other recent documentaries – but it still makes for enjoyable, thought-provoking viewing." One reviewer said "he's telling us something everyone already knows: Fast food is bad for you."


title: Super Size Me

text: Robert Davis of "Paste" said the movie accomplished some of its goals and addressed an important topic, but, at the same time, sometimes looked more like a publicity stunt than a documentary. He primarily criticized the dramatic and unscientific approach of "Super Size Me", saying Spurlock unnecessarily ate more than he had to and ignored his nutritionist's advice. Davis explained he would have been more interested had the documentary been about trying to eat as healthy as possible at McDonald's: "You could choose low-fat options, but it would be impossible to get enough vegetables and fiber, and the low-fat meal would be incredibly bland, the product of a system that has worked to optimize food delivery and consistency and, in doing so, has invented foods so devoid of flavor that they require dressings, oils, beef tallow and goopy coatings to make them more than just textured blobs. The industry has worked hard to convince consumers that these odd, sweet flavors are not only good but also unique, recognizable parts of a brand. Spurlock doesn't attempt to convey this message, presumably because the affects of too few vegetables and too little fiber aren't as dramatic as speedy weight-and-cholesterol gains."


title: Super Size Me

text: McDonald's UK responded that the author intentionally consumed an average of 5,000 calories per day and did not exercise, and that the results would have been the same regardless of the source of overeating.


title: Super Size Me

text: In his reply documentary "Fat Head", Tom Naughton "suggests that Spurlock's calorie and fat counts don't add up" and noted Spurlock's refusal to publish the "Super Size Me" food log. The "Houston Chronicle" reports: "Unlike Spurlock, Naughton has a page on his Web site that lists every item (including nutritional information) he ate during his fast-food month."


title: Super Size Me

text: After eating exclusively at McDonald's for one month, Soso Whaley said, "The first time I did the diet in April 2004, I lost 10 pounds (going from 175 to 165) and lowered my cholesterol from 237 to 197, a drop of 40 points." Of particular note was that she exercised regularly and did not insist on consuming more food than she otherwise would. Despite eating at only McDonald's every day, she maintained her caloric intake at around 2,000 per day.


title: Super Size Me

text: After John Cisna, a high school science teacher, lost 60 pounds while eating exclusively at McDonald's for 180 days, he said, "I'm not pushing McDonald's. I'm not pushing fast food. I'm pushing taking accountability and making the right choice for you individually... As a science teacher, I would never show "Super Size Me" because when I watched that, I never saw the educational value in that... I mean, a guy eats uncontrollable amounts of food, stops exercising, and the whole world is surprised he puts on weight? What I'm not proud about is probably 70 to 80 percent of my colleagues across the United States still show "Super Size Me" in their health class or their biology class. I don't get it."


title: Super Size Me

text: As a counterpoint, the film features interviews with Big Mac aficionado Don Gorske, who eats an average of 2 Big Macs a day, yet maintains his weight and cholesterol.


title: Super Size Me

text: Six weeks after the film's debut, McDonald's discontinued its supersize portions. In the United Kingdom, McDonald's publicized a website which included a response to and criticisms of the film. In theaters in the UK, the company placed a brief ad in the film's trailers, pointing to the URL and stating, "See what we disagree with. See what we agree with."


title: Super Size Me

text: Internationally, "Super Size Me" was a major success in the box office of Australia. McDonald's in Australia responded with an advertising campaign that included three elements: two advertisements for TV and one produced to be shown in movie theaters.


title: Super Size Me

text: The film was the inspiration for the BBC television series "The Supersizers..." in which the presenters dine on historical meals and take medical tests to ascertain the impact on their health.


title: Super Size Me

text: The film was also inspiration for the 2007 documentary film "Super High Me" directed by Michael Blieden. The film follows Doug Benson, a comedian and cannabis enthusiast, as he becomes the subject to a multitude of tests designed to measure the physical and mental impacts of, first, not smoking cannabis for 30 days, and then smoking non-stop for 30 days. The poster for the movie was modeled after one of the promotional posters from "Super Size Me".


title: Crocodilia

text: Crocodilia (or Crocodylia, both ) is an order of mostly large, predatory, semiaquatic reptiles, known as crocodilians. They first appeared 95 million years ago in the Late Cretaceous period (Cenomanian stage) and are the closest living relatives of birds, as the two groups are the only known survivors of the Archosauria. Members of the order's total group, the clade Pseudosuchia, appeared about 250 million years ago in the Early Triassic period, and diversified during the Mesozoic era. The order Crocodilia includes the true crocodiles (family Crocodylidae), the alligators and caimans (family Alligatoridae), and the gharial and false gharial (family Gavialidae). Although the term 'crocodiles' is sometimes used to refer to all of these, crocodilians is a less ambiguous vernacular term for members of this group.


title: Crocodilia

text: Large, solidly built, lizard-like reptiles, crocodilians have long flattened snouts, laterally compressed tails, and eyes, ears, and nostrils at the top of the head. They swim well and can move on land in a "high walk" and a "low walk", while smaller species are even capable of galloping. Their skin is thick and covered in non-overlapping scales. They have conical, peg-like teeth and a powerful bite. They have a four-chambered heart and, somewhat like birds, a unidirectional looping system of airflow within the lungs, but like other living reptiles they are ectotherms.


title: Crocodilia

text: Crocodilians are found mainly in lowlands in the tropics, but alligators also live in the southeastern United States and the Yangtze River in China. They are largely carnivorous, the various species feeding on animals such as fish, crustaceans, molluscs, birds, and mammals; some species like the Indian gharial are specialised feeders, while others like the saltwater crocodile have generalised diets. Crocodilians are typically solitary and territorial, though cooperative feeding does occur. During breeding, dominant males try to monopolise available females. Females lay eggs in holes or in mounds and, unlike most other reptiles, care for their hatched young.


title: Crocodilia

text: Some species of crocodilians are known to have attacked humans. The largest number of attacks comes from the Nile crocodile. Humans are the greatest threat to crocodilian populations through activities that include hunting, poaching, and habitat destruction, but farming of crocodilians has greatly reduced unlawful trading in wild skins. Artistic and literary representations of crocodilians have appeared in human cultures around the world since Ancient Egypt. The earliest known mention of the story that crocodiles weep for their victims was in the 9th century; it was later spread by Sir John Mandeville in 1400 and then by William Shakespeare in the late 16th century and early 17th century.


title: Crocodilia

text: Crocodilia and Crocodylia have been used interchangeably for decades starting with Schmidt's redescription of the group from the formerly defunct term Loricata. Schmidt used the older term Crocodilia, based on Owen's original name for the group. Shortly after, Wermuth opted for Crocodylia as the proper name for this redescribed group, basing it on the type genus "Crocodylus" (Laurenti, 1768). Dundee—in a revision of many reptilian and amphibian names—argued strongly for Crocodylia to be the spelling for the group. However, it was not until the advent of cladistics and phylogenetic nomenclature that a more solid justification for assuming one spelling over the other was proposed.


title: Crocodilia

text: Prior to 1988, Crocodilia/Crocodylia was a group that encompassed the modern-day animals as well as their more distant relatives now in the larger groups called Crocodylomorpha and Pseudosuchia. Under its current definition as a crown group (as opposed to a stem-based group), Crocodylia is now restricted to only the last common ancestor of today's modern-day crocodilians (alligators, crocodiles, and gharials) and all of its descendants (living or extinct). This distinction is more important for paleontologists studying crocodilian evolution. As such, the alternate spellings Crocodilia and Crocodylia are still used interchangeably in the neontological literature.


title: Crocodilia

text: Crocodilia appears to be a Latinizing of the Greek κροκόδειλος ("crocodeilos"), which means both lizard and Nile crocodile. Crocodylia, as coined by Wermuth, in regards to the genus "Crocodylus" appears to be derived from the ancient Greek κρόκη ("kroke")—meaning shingle or pebble—and δρîλος or δρεîλος ("dr(e)ilos") for "worm". The name may refer to the animal's habit of basking on the pebbled shores of the Nile.


title: Crocodilia

text: Crocodilians range in size from the "Paleosuchus" and "Osteolaemus" species, which reach , to the saltwater crocodile, which reaches and weighs up to , though some prehistoric species such as the late Cretaceous "Deinosuchus" were even larger at up to about and . They tend to be sexually dimorphic, with males much larger than females. Though there is diversity in snout and tooth shape, all crocodilian species have essentially the same body morphology. They have solidly built, lizard-like bodies with elongated, flattened snouts and laterally compressed tails. Their limbs are reduced in size; the front feet have five digits with little or no webbing, and the hind feet have four webbed digits and a rudimentary fifth. The skeleton is somewhat typical of tetrapods, although the skull, pelvis and ribs are specialised; in particular, the cartilaginous processes of the ribs allow the thorax to collapse during diving and the structure of the pelvis can accommodate large masses of food, or more air in the lungs. Both sexes have a cloaca, a single chamber and outlet at the base of the tail into which the intestinal, urinary and genital tracts open. It houses the penis in males and the clitoris in females. The crocodilian penis is permanently erect and relies on cloacal muscles for eversion and elastic ligaments and a tendon for recoil. The gonads are located near the kidneys.


title: Crocodilia

text: The eyes, ears and nostrils of crocodilians are at the top of the head. This allows them to stalk their prey with most of their bodies underwater. Crocodilians possess a "tapetum lucidum" which enhances vision in low light. While eyesight is fairly good in air, it is significantly weakened underwater. The fovea in other vertebrates is usually circular, but in crocodiles it is a horizontal bar of tightly packed receptors across the middle of the retina. When the animal completely submerges, the nictitating membranes cover its eyes. In addition, glands on the nictitating membrane secrete a salty lubricant that keeps the eye clean. When a crocodilian leaves the water and dries off, this substance is visible as "tears".


title: Crocodilia

text: The ears are adapted for hearing both in air and underwater, and the eardrums are protected by flaps that can be opened or closed by muscles. Crocodilians have a wide hearing range, with sensitivity comparable to most birds and many mammals. They have only one olfactory chamber and the vomeronasal organ is absent in the adults indicating all olfactory perception is limited to the olfactory system. Behavioural and olfactometer experiments indicate that crocodiles detect both air-borne and water-soluble chemicals and use their olfactory system for hunting. When above water, crocodiles enhance their ability to detect volatile odorants by gular pumping, a rhythmic movement of the floor of the pharynx. The well-developed trigeminal nerve allows them to detect vibrations in the water (such as those made by potential prey). The tongue cannot move freely but is held in place by a folded membrane. They appear to have lost their pineal organ, but still show signs of melatonin rhythms. Vocal folds (vocal cords) was found in "Alligator mississipiensis", that have a complex morphology consisting of epithelium, lamina propria and muscle, and according to Riede et al. (2015), "it is reasonable to expect species-specific morphologies in vocal folds/analogues as far back as basal reptiles". Crocodilians can produce vocalisations by vibrating three flaps in the larynx. The crocodilian larynx is capable of complex motor control similar to birds and mammals. While the brain of a crocodilian is fairly small, it is capable of greater learning than most reptiles.


title: Crocodilia

text: Crocodilians are excellent swimmers. During aquatic locomotion, the muscular tail undulates from side to side to drive the animal through the water while the limbs are held close to the body to reduce drag. When the animal needs to stop, steer, or manoeuvre in a different direction, the limbs are splayed out. Crocodilians generally cruise slowly on the surface or underwater with gentle sinuous movements of the tail, but when pursued or when chasing prey they can move rapidly. Crocodilians are less well-adapted for moving on land, and are unusual among vertebrates in having two different means of terrestrial locomotion: the "high walk" and the "low walk". Their ankle joints flex in a different way from those of other reptiles, a feature they share with some early archosaurs. One of the upper row of ankle bones, the astragalus, moves with the tibia and fibula. The other, the calcaneum, is functionally part of the foot, and has a socket into which a peg from the astragalus fits. The result is that the legs can be held almost vertically beneath the body when on land, and the foot can swivel during locomotion with a twisting movement at the ankle.


title: Crocodilia

text: The high walk of crocodilians, with the belly and most of the tail being held off the ground, is unique among living reptiles. It somewhat resembles the walk of a mammal, with the same sequence of limb movements: left fore, right hind, right fore, left hind. The low walk is similar to the high walk, but without the body being raised, and is quite different from the sprawling walk of salamanders and lizards. The animal can change from one walk to the other instantaneously, but the high walk is the usual means of locomotion on land. The animal may push its body up and use this form immediately, or may take one or two strides of low walk before raising the body higher. Unlike most other land vertebrates, when crocodilians increase their pace of travel they increase the speed at which the lower half of each limb (rather than the whole leg) swings forward; by this means, stride length increases while stride duration decreases.


title: Crocodilia

text: Though typically slow on land, crocodilians can produce brief bursts of speed, and some can run at for short distances. A fast entry into water from a muddy bank can be effected by plunging to the ground, twisting the body from side to side and splaying out the limbs. In some small species such as the freshwater crocodile, a running gait can progress to a bounding gallop. This involves the hind limbs launching the body forward and the fore limbs subsequently taking the weight. Next, the hind limbs swing forward as the spine flexes dorso-ventrally, and this sequence of movements is repeated. During terrestrial locomotion, a crocodilian can keep its back and tail straight, since the scales are attached to the vertebrae by muscles. Whether on land or in water, crocodilians can jump or leap by pressing their tails and hind limbs against the substrate and then launching themselves into the air.


title: Crocodilia

text: The snout shape of crocodilians varies between species. Crocodiles may have either broad or slender snouts, while alligators and caimans have mostly broad ones. Gharials have snouts that are extremely elongated. The muscles that close the jaws are much more massive and powerful than the ones that open them, and a crocodilian's jaws can be held shut by a person fairly easily. Conversely, the jaws are extremely difficult to pry open. The powerful closing muscles attach at the median portion of the lower jaw and the jaw hinge attaches to the atlanto-occipital joint, allowing the animal to open its mouth fairly wide.


title: Crocodilia

text: Crocodilians have some of the strongest bite forces in the animal kingdom. In a study published in 2003, an American alligator's bite force was measured at up to . In a 2012 study, a saltwater crocodile's bite force was measured even higher, at . This study also found no correlation between bite force and snout shape. Nevertheless, the gharial's extremely slender jaws are relatively weak and built more for quick jaw closure. The bite force of "Deinosuchus" may have measured , even greater than that of theropod dinosaurs like "Tyrannosaurus".


title: Crocodilia

text: Crocodilian teeth vary from blunt and dull to sharp and needle-like. Broad-snouted species have teeth that vary in size, while those of slender-snouted species are more uniform. The teeth of crocodiles and gharials tend to be more visible than those of alligators and caimans when the jaws are closed. The easiest way to distinguish crocodiles from alligators is by looking at their jaw line. The teeth on the lower jaw of an alligator fit into sockets in the upper jaw, so only the upper teeth are visible when the mouth is closed. The teeth on the lower jaw of a crocodile fit into grooves on the outside of the top jaw making both the upper and lower teeth visible when the mouth is closed.


title: Crocodilia

text: Crocodilians are homodonts, meaning each of their teeth are all of the same type (they do not possess different tooth types, such as canines and molars) and polyphyodonts are able to replace each of their approximately 80 teeth up to 50 times in their 35 to 75-year lifespan. They are the only non-mammalian vertebrates with tooth sockets. Next to each full-grown tooth there is a small replacement tooth and an odontogenic stem cell in the dental lamina in standby, which can be activated when required. Tooth replacement slows significantly and eventually stops as the animal grows old.


title: Crocodilia

text: The skin of crocodilians is thick and cornified, and is clad in non-overlapping scales known as scutes, arranged in regular rows and patterns. These scales are continually being produced by cell division in the underlying layer of the epidermis, the stratum germinativum, and the surface of individual scutes sloughs off periodically. The outer surface of the scutes consists of the relatively rigid beta-keratin while the hinge region between the scutes contains only the more pliable alpha-keratin.


title: Crocodilia

text: Many of the scutes are strengthened by bony plates known as osteoderms, which are the same size and shape as the superficial scales but grow beneath them. They are most numerous on the back and neck of the animal and may form a protective armour. They often have prominent, lumpy ridges and are covered in hard-wearing beta-keratin. The head and jaws lack actual scales and are instead covered in tight keratinised skin that cracks due to stress. The skin on the neck and flanks is loose, while that on the abdomen and underside of the tail is sheathed in large, flat square scutes arranged in neat rows. The scutes contain blood vessels and may act to absorb or radiate heat during thermoregulation. Research also suggests that alkaline ions released into the blood from the calcium and magnesium in these dermal bones act as a buffer during prolonged submersion when increasing levels of carbon dioxide would otherwise cause acidosis.


title: Crocodilia

text: Some scutes contain a single pore known as an integumentary sense organ. Crocodiles and gharials have these on large parts of their bodies, while alligators and caimans only have them on the head. Their exact function is not fully understood, but it has been suggested that they may be mechanosensory organs. Another possibility is that they may produce an oily secretion that prevents mud from adhering to the skin. There are prominent paired integumentary glands in skin folds on the throat, and others in the side walls of the cloaca. Various functions for these have been suggested. They may play a part in communication, as indirect evidence suggest that they secrete pheromones used in courtship or nesting. The skin of crocodilians is tough and can withstand damage from conspecifics, and the immune system is effective enough to heal wounds within a few days.


title: Crocodilia

text: The crocodilian has perhaps the most complex vertebrate circulatory system. It has a four-chambered heart and two ventricles, an unusual trait among extant reptiles, and both a left and right aorta which are connected by a hole called the Foramen of Panizza. Like birds and mammals, crocodilians have heart valves that direct blood flow in a single direction through the heart chambers. They also have unique cog-teeth-like valves that, when interlocked, direct blood to the left aorta and away from the lungs, and then back around the body. This system may allow the animals to remain submerged for a longer period, but this explanation has been questioned. Other possible reasons for the peculiar circulatory system include assistance with thermoregulatory needs, prevention of pulmonary oedema, or faster recovery from metabolic acidosis. Retaining carbon dioxide within the body permits an increase in the rate of gastric acid secretion and thus the efficiency of digestion, and other gastrointestinal organs such as the pancreas, spleen, small intestine, and liver also function more efficiently.


title: Crocodilia

text: When submerged, a crocodilian's heart rate slows down to one or two beats a minute, and blood flow to the muscles is reduced. When it rises and takes a breath, its heart rate speeds up in seconds, and the muscles receive newly oxygenated blood. Unlike many marine mammals, crocodilians have little myoglobin to store oxygen in their muscles. During diving, muscles are supplied with oxygen when an increasing concentration of bicarbonate ions causes haemoglobin in the blood to release oxygen.


title: Crocodilia

text: Crocodilians were traditionally thought to breathe like mammals, with airflow moving in and out tidally, but studies published in 2010 and 2013 conclude that crocodilians breathe more like birds, with airflow moving in a unidirectional loop within the lungs. When a crocodilian inhales, air flows through the trachea and into two primary bronchi, or airways, which branch off into narrower secondary passageways. The air continues to move through these, then into even narrower tertiary airways, and then into other secondary airways which were bypassed the first time. The air then flows back into the primary airways and is exhaled. These aerodynamic valves within the bronchial tree have been hypothesised to explain how crocodilians can have unidirectional airflow without the aid of avian-like air sacs.


title: Crocodilia

text: The lungs of crocodilians are attached to the liver and the pelvis by the diaphragmaticus muscle (analogous of the diaphragm in mammals). During inhalation, the external intercostal muscles expand the ribs, allowing the animal to take in more air, while the ischiopubis muscle causes the hips to swing downwards and push the belly outward, and the diaphragmaticus pulls the liver back. When exhaling, the internal intercostal muscles push the ribs inward, while the rectus abdominis pulls the hips and liver forwards and the belly inward. Because the lungs expand into the space formerly occupied by the liver and are compressed when it moves back into position, this motion is sometimes referred to as a "hepatic piston". Crocodilians can also use these muscles to adjust the position of their lungs; thereby controlling their buoyancy in the water. An animal sinks when the lungs are pulled towards the tail and floats when they move back towards the head. This allows them to move through the water without creating disturbances that could alert potential prey. They can also spin and twist by moving their lungs laterally.


title: Crocodilia

text: Swimming and diving crocodilians appear to rely on lung volume more for buoyancy than oxygen storage. Just before diving, the animal exhales to reduce its lung volume and achieve negative buoyancy. When submerging, the nostrils of a crocodilian shut tight. All species have a palatal valve, a membranous flap of skin at the back of the oral cavity that prevents water from flowing into the throat, oesophagus, and trachea. This enables them to open their mouths underwater without drowning. Crocodilians typically remain underwater for fifteen minutes or less at a time, but some can hold their breath for up to two hours under ideal conditions. The maximum diving depth is unknown, but crocodiles can dive to at least .


title: Crocodilia

text: Crocodilian teeth are adapted for seizing and holding prey, and food is swallowed unchewed. The digestive tract is relatively short, as meat is a fairly simple substance to digest. The stomach is divided into two parts: a muscular gizzard that grinds food, and a digestive chamber where enzymes work on it. The stomach is more acidic than that of any other vertebrate and contains ridges for gastroliths, which play a role in the mechanical breakdown of food. Digestion takes place more quickly at higher temperatures. Crocodilians have a very low metabolic rate and consequently, low energy requirements. This allows them to survive for many months on a single large meal, digesting the food slowly. They can withstand extended fasting, living on stored fat between meals. Even recently hatched crocodiles are able to survive 58 days without food, losing 23% of their bodyweight during this time. An adult crocodile needs between a tenth and a fifth of the amount of food necessary for a lion of the same weight, and can live for half a year without eating.


title: Crocodilia

text: "Amona glabra" (Pond-apple tree) seeds recovered from the stomach of an "Alligator mississippiensis" (American alligator) captured in the Florida Coastal Everglades were nonviable under ideal germination conditions and were likely destroyed by stomach acids. Alligators are unlikely to be dispersers of Pond-apple seeds and may instead act as seed predators.


title: Crocodilia

text: Crocodilians are ectotherms, producing relatively little heat internally and relying on external sources to raise their body temperatures. The sun's heat is the main means of warming for any crocodilian, while immersion in water may either raise its temperature by conduction, or cool the animal in hot weather. The main method for regulating its temperature is behavioural. For example, an alligator in temperate regions may start the day by basking in the sun on land. A bulky animal, it warms up slowly, but at some time later in the day it moves into the water, still exposing its dorsal surface to the sun. At night it remains submerged, and its temperature slowly falls. The basking period is extended in winter and reduced in summer. For crocodiles in the tropics, avoiding overheating is generally the main problem. They may bask briefly in the morning but then move into the shade, remaining there for the rest of the day, or submerge themselves in water to keep cool. Gaping with the mouth can provide cooling by evaporation from the mouth lining. By these means, the temperature range of crocodilians is usually maintained between , and mainly stays in the range .


title: Crocodilia

text: The ranges of the American and Chinese alligator extend into regions that sometimes experience periods of frost in winter. Being ectothermic, the internal body temperature of crocodilians falls as the temperature drops, and they become sluggish. They may become more active on warm days, but do not usually feed at all during the winter. In cold weather, they remain submerged with their tails in deeper, less cold water and their nostrils just projecting through the surface. If ice forms on the water, they maintain ice-free breathing holes, and there have been occasions when their snouts have become frozen into the ice. Temperature sensing probes implanted in wild American alligators have found that their core body temperatures can descend to around , but as long as they remain able to breathe they show no ill effects when the weather warms up.


title: Crocodilia

text: No living species of crocodilian can be considered truly marine; although the saltwater crocodile and the American crocodile are able to swim out to sea, their normal habitats are river mouths, estuaries, mangrove swamps, and hypersaline lakes, though several extinct species have had marine habitats, including the recently extinct "Ikanogavialis papuensis", which occurred in a fully marine habitat in the Solomon Islands coastlines. All crocodilians need to maintain the concentration of salt in body fluids at suitable levels. Osmoregulation is related to the quantity of salts and water exchanged with the environment. Intake of water and salts takes place across the lining of the mouth, when water is drunk, incidentally while feeding, and when present in foods. Water is lost from the body during breathing, and both salts and water are lost in the urine and faeces, through the skin, and via salt-excreting glands on the tongue, though these are only present in crocodiles and gharials. The skin is a largely effective barrier to both water and ions. Gaping causes water loss by evaporation from the lining of the mouth, and on land, water is also lost through the skin. Large animals are better able to maintain homeostasis at times of osmotic stress than smaller ones. Newly hatched crocodilians are much less tolerant of exposure to salt water than are older juveniles, presumably because they have a higher surface-area-to-volume ratio.


title: Crocodilia

text: The kidneys and excretory system are much the same as in other reptiles, but crocodilians do not have a bladder. In fresh water, the osmolality (the concentration of solutes that contribute to a solution's osmotic pressure) in the plasma is much higher than it is in the surrounding water. The animals are well-hydrated, and the urine in the cloaca is abundant and dilute, nitrogen being excreted as ammonium bicarbonate. Sodium loss is low and mainly takes place through the skin in freshwater conditions. In seawater, the opposite is true. The osmolality in the plasma is lower than the surrounding water, which is dehydrating for the animal. The cloacal urine is much more concentrated, white, and opaque, with the nitrogenous waste being mostly excreted as insoluble uric acid.


title: Crocodilia

text: Crocodilians are amphibious reptiles, spending part of their time in water and part on land. The last surviving fully terrestrial genus, "Mekosuchus", became extinct about 3000 years ago after humans had arrived on its Pacific islands, making the extinction possibly anthropogenic. Typically they are creatures of the tropics; the main exceptions are the American and Chinese alligators, whose ranges consist of the south-eastern United States and the Yangtze River, respectively. Florida, in the United States, is the only place that crocodiles and alligators live side by side. Most crocodilians live in the lowlands, and few are found above , where the temperatures are typically about 5 °C (9 °F) lower than at the coast. None of them permanently reside in the sea, though some can venture into it, and several species can tolerate the brackish water of estuaries, mangrove swamps, and the extreme salinity of hypersaline lakes. The saltwater crocodile has the widest distribution of any crocodilian, with a range extending from eastern India to New Guinea and northern Australia. Much of its success is due to its ability to swim out to sea and colonise new locations, but it is not restricted to the marine environment and spends much time in estuaries, rivers, and large lakes.


title: Crocodilia

text: Various types of aquatic habitats are used by different crocodilians. Some species are relatively more terrestrial and prefer swamps, ponds, and the edges of lakes, where they can bask in the sun and there is plenty of plant life supporting a diverse fauna. Others spend more time in the water and inhabit the lower stretches of rivers, mangrove swamps, and estuaries. These habitats also have a rich flora and provide plenty of food. The Asian gharials find the fish on which they feed in the pools and backwaters of swift rivers. South American dwarf caimans inhabit cool, fast-flowing streams, often near waterfalls, and other caimans live in warmer, turbid lakes and slow-moving rivers. The crocodiles are mainly river dwellers, and the Chinese alligator is found in slow-moving, turbid rivers flowing across China's floodplains. The American alligator is an adaptable species and inhabits swamps, rivers, or lakes with clear or turbid water. Climatic factors also affect crocodilians' distribution locally. During the dry season, caimans can be restricted to deep pools in rivers for several months; in the rainy season, much of the savanna in the Orinoco Llanos is flooded, and they disperse widely across the plain. Desert crocodiles in Mauritania have adapted to their arid environment by staying in caves or burrows in a state of aestivation during the driest periods. When it rains, the reptiles gather at gueltas.


title: Crocodilia

text: Dry land is also important as it provides opportunities for basking, nesting, and escaping from temperature extremes. Gaping allows evaporation of moisture from the mouth lining and has a cooling effect, and several species make use of shallow burrows on land to keep cool. Wallowing in mud can also help prevent them from overheating. Four species of crocodilians climb trees to bask in areas lacking a shoreline. The type of vegetation bordering the rivers and lakes inhabited by crocodilians is mostly humid tropical forest, with mangrove swamps in estuarine areas. These forests are of great importance to the crocodilians, creating suitable microhabitats where they can flourish. The roots of the trees absorb water when it rains, releasing it back slowly into the environment. When the forests are cleared to make way for agriculture, rivers tend to silt up, the water runs off rapidly, the water courses can dry up in the dry season and flooding can occur in the wet season. Destruction of forest habitat is probably a greater threat to crocodilians than hunting.


title: Crocodilia

text: Being highly efficient predators, crocodilians tend to be top of the food chain in their watery environments. The nest mounds built by some species of crocodilian are used by other animals for their own purposes. American alligator mounds are used by turtles and snakes, both for basking and for laying their own eggs. The Florida red-bellied turtle specialises in this, and alligator mounds may have several clutches of turtle eggs developing alongside the owner's eggs. Alligators modify some wetland habitats in flat areas such as the Everglades by constructing small ponds known as "alligator holes". These create wetter or drier habitats for other organisms, such as plants, fish, invertebrates, amphibians, reptiles, and mammals. In the limestone depressions of cypress swamps, alligator holes tend to be large and deep. Those in marl prairies and rocky glades are usually small and shallow, while those in peat depressions of ridge and slough wetlands are more variable. Man-made holes do not appear to have as large an effect.


title: Crocodilia

text: In the Amazon basin, when caimans became scarce as a result of overhunting in the mid-20th century, the number of local fish, such as the important arapaima ("Arapaima gigas"), also decreased. These are nutrient-poor waters, and the urine and faeces of the caimans may have increased primary production by contributing plant nutrients. Thus the presence of the reptiles could have benefited the fish stock; the number of crocodilians in a stretch of water appears to be correlated with the fish population.


title: Crocodilia

text: Adult crocodilians are typically territorial and solitary. Individuals may defend basking spots, nesting sites, feeding areas, nurseries, and overwintering sites. Male saltwater crocodiles establish year-round territories that encompass several female nesting sites. Some species are occasionally gregarious, particularly during droughts, when several individuals gather at remaining water sites. Individuals of some species may share basking sites at certain times of the day.


title: Crocodilia

text: Crocodilians are largely carnivorous, and the diets of different species can vary with snout shape and tooth sharpness. Species with sharp teeth and long slender snouts, like the Indian gharial and Australian freshwater crocodile, are specialised for feeding on fish, insects, and crustaceans, while extremely broad-snouted species with blunt teeth, like the Chinese alligator and broad-snouted caiman, specialise in eating hard-shelled molluscs. Species whose snouts and teeth are intermediate between these two forms, such as the saltwater crocodile and American alligator, have generalised diets and opportunistically feed on invertebrates, fish, amphibians, other reptiles, birds, and mammals. Though mostly carnivorous, several species of crocodilian have been observed to consume fruit, and this may play a role in seed dispersal.