Idiots swim INSIDE crocodile trap baited with pig carcasses in infested Australian waters

A GROUP of men are lucky to be alive after swimming inside a crocodile trap in a river infested with the savage predators.

The four grinning morons were pictured inside the trap - which is baited with pig carcasses - in a marina in Port Douglas, Queensland, Australia.

One of the men even climbed on top of the cage to close the gate - trapping the others inside.

The pictures emerged just a week after it was reported that the grisly remains of a woman who disappeared after wandering out of a care home were found inside the stomach of a crocodile.

Tragic dementia sufferer Anne Cameron's walking stick was discovered in dense Australian bush where the killer reptiles are known to lurk, sparking a massive croc hunt.

The Department of Environment and Heritage Protection (EHP) is now investigating the "stupid and reckless interference".

A spokesperson told ABC: "These traps are specifically designed to attract crocodiles and they are deployed in places where a problem crocodile is known to be present.

"It is extremely dangerous to interfere with a crocodile trap, regardless of whether or not there is a crocodile within.

"It is not an exaggeration to say that interfering with crocodile traps can be potentially life-threatening for the person concerned."

Environment Minister Steven Miles added: "You've got grown men swimming in a crocodile trap, exactly where we put the bait for the crocodiles.

"The trap is dangerous in and of itself, and of course if the crocodile were to appear that would be even more dangerous."

The Department of Environment has also warned of an increase in crocodiles and other predators after recent heavy rainfall and flooding.

Remains found in crocodile believed to be missing Queensland woman

Human remains have been found inside a large crocodile police believe killed an elderly woman in Queensland's far north.

Remains believed to belong to Anne Cameron, her walking stick and other items were located at Craiglie Creek, south of Port Douglas, last week.

The 79-year-old was last seen two days before the grim discovery near an aged-care facility and it is thought she became disorientated on a walk and wandered into dense bushland.

Baited traps were set along the creek and nearby Mowbray river, and wildlife officers captured a 4.3m crocodile on Monday night near Craiglie. The animal was examined in Cairns on Tuesday, with human remains found inside.

A report will now be prepared for the coroner.

Cameron's death has prompted Katter's Australian party to renew calls for more stringent management of crocodiles, including culling.

Two other people – Warren Hughes, 35, and Cindy Waldron, 46 – have been killed by crocodiles in far north Queensland in the past 18 months.

Can a crocodile stick out its tongue?

Alligators and crocodiles are often mistaken for one another – but there is one crucial difference.

It turns out crocodiles can't stick their tongues out, while alligators can.

Not only that but the tongue shape and position of a croc is completely different to a gator. That's a pretty important distinction, especially if you spot a gator type creature laying beside a path out in the Everglades in Florida. Gators can be fairly relaxed when a person walks past while a croc might snap your legs off. But why is there a difference at all? After all aren't the two creatures closely related? Here is everything you need to know.

Why can't a crocodile stick out its tongue?

Crocs have a membrane that holds their tongue in place on the roof of their mouth so it doesn't move. This makes it impossible for them to stick it outside of their narrow mouths, according to the BBC. That can be handy for the reptile when snapping its jaws shut rapidly. It wouldn't want to accidentally snap its own tongue off when eating prey. The quirk is in Nile crocodiles, American crocodiles, dwarf crocodiles and mugger crocs.

Okay what about alligators?

Alligator tongues meanwhile run along the full length of their snouts – which can be up to two feet long. At the back of their tongue they have a palatal valve, which is a piece of flesh that stops water getting in when they are submerged. It kind of acts like a seal. It also means that gators can open their mouths under water to catch prey, according to Ben Tabley, the head of herpetology at London Zoo. And yes they can stick their tongues out.

What other differences are there?

Gators and crocs can usually be distinguished from one another with the shape of their heads. Crocodiles, which are brown , have narrow snouts while gators have a much wider nose. Crocodiles have teeth in their lower jaws that protrude when the mouth is shut. Alligators, which are typically black in colour, meanwhile only show their upper teeth with their mouths closed. Both crocs and alligators live in freshwater but only crocodiles can lives in salt water because they have glads that excrete salt to allow them to survive. In Florida crocodiles are considered an endangered species while alligators are only considered a species of ‘special concern', according to Wild Florida.

Confronting the crocodile that mauled the Barefoot Bushman

As a rule, Australians hate to think of themselves as part of the food chain and we generally aren't.

How could we be when 75 percent of us live in big cities far from the rigours of the natural world?

We are the most urbanised people on earth but we claim ownership of a huge, empty continent. Yet when some of us are taken by predators after venturing into the ocean or into a tropical river, what outrage we vent against the natural world!

We so easily forget that more Australians have died or been hospitalised every year from bee stings than from crocodiles and sharks. And that 1200 people died on our roads last year.

On average, three Australians are killed by sharks every year and about the same from crocodiles. So, why the hysteria?

The days I spent shooting this story with Barefoot Bushman Rob Bred reminded me again that we share our vast continent with an extraordinary population of wonderful creatures great and small and that they have every bit as much right to the tenure of these lands as have we.

It's us who are the newcomers to this country and indeed to the planet, while crocodiles have been on earth unchanged for hundreds of millions of years.

Our fear of such awesome predators must have been hard-wired into our genes, as I immediately realised when I heard the loud, sharp and almost metallic clang of a crocodile's jaws snapping shut at close quarters.

I leapt and made comments that couldn't be broadcast.

Each time those awful jaws snapped shut I reacted to the primordial horror. Certainly, according to Charlie Darwin, I was only alive now because my ancestors had the better sense to stay well away from that terrible sound.

For me, almost 30 years of reporting on 60 Minutes has conferred some scary moments and getting into that croc enclosure in Queensland this week should have been one of the scariest.

But in this business, you calculate the odds and as an inveterate coward I figured you couldn't get up close with a monster crocodile in safer company than that of Bredl.

He has been bitten many times and has survived until now.

So sensibly I made sure to keep Rob between the crocodile and myself. After all,  I had to survive to tell the tale.

An Australian grandmother may have been killed by a crocodile

An Australian woman who reportedly suffered from dementia is believed to have been killed by a crocodile after disappearing from a nursing home and wandering into the bushland.

Queensland police said 79-year-old Anne Cameron was last seen Tuesday afternoon walking down a road in Craiglie, a rural town not far from Port Douglas.

Two days later, human remains and personal items belonging to Cameron, including her clothes and walking stick, were found near a creek along Australia's Four Mile Beach, authorities said.

"We strongly suspect now that there has been involvement of a crocodile attack given the location of those items and the human remains located close to a watercourse," Ed Lukin of the Queensland Police Service said, according to the Brisbane Times.

Lukin, the department's acting inspector, told the newspaper it was "highly likely" that the remains were Cameron's because there had been no other reported missing people in the area.

Police are now searching for the crocodile.

[Financial Times journalist is killed in crocodile attack on surfing vacation in Sri Lanka]

For days, authorities had been looking for Cameron, who they said was possibly wearing a light-colored shirt and long pants, and carrying a walking stick with her name on it.

Police alerted nearby residents, urging them to "check their yards and properties including sheds."

The Brisbane Times reported that Cameron had moved to Port Douglas from Canberra to be closer to family after her dementia diagnosis.

A close family friend described Cameron as a "lovely lady" who was "very quiet and very modest."

"She was a very keen walker, especially after she retired. She loved to go bushwalking," the friend, who was not named, told the Brisbane Times.

Authorities made their grim discovery Thursday.

According to the Brisbane Times, Cameron's granddaughter, Isabella Eggins, later posted a message on a community Facebook page, saying it was her "deep regret" that after an exhaustive search, "we have the firm belief that my nan Anne Cameron has passed away in tragic circumstances."

Michael Joyce, wildlife director of the Queensland Department of Environment and Heritage Protection, told the newspaper that rangers had set traps near the water and crews were searching by boat and helicopter for the crocodile.

Four Mile Beach is in the northernmost part of Queensland, where "crocodiles are part of the natural and cultural heritage," according to the Department of Environment and Heritage Protection.

"Crocodile danger is real — don't risk your life," the agency warns, noting that people should "expect crocodiles in ALL north Queensland waterways, even if there is no warning sign. . . . Crocodiles can lunge at people and animals at the water's edge. They are ambush predators, and you may not see them."

Though crocodiles have been known to attack humans, the agency adds, "the statistics show that you are more likely to die from a lightning strike or bee sting than from a crocodile attack.

"But remember, be Crocwise in croc country!"

Crocodile kills boy fishing to pay school fees

A 13-year-old boy trying to collect dead fish to pay his school fees was killed by a crocodile in southern Zimbabwe last week.

Owen Chianga and his friend Liberty Ruzivo, 15, were attacked by two crocodiles at about lunchtime last Thursday while they were fishing in the Save River near the village of Birchenough Bridge.

Chauruva Ruzivo, Liberty's father, ran to the river when he heard his son screaming for help, he told the local Manica Post newspaper. There were two crocodiles and he was able to extricate his son from the jaws of one.

"I rushed to the scene and saw [Liberty] wrestling with one of the crocodiles. By the time I arrived, his friend had been overpowered and dragged into the dam. I held my son by his upper body and pulled him from the jaws of the crocodile," he said.

The boys had waded further into the water than usual after noticing dead fish floating in the water, possibly as a result of pollution from diamond mines in nearby Marange. In 2014 up to 1,000 cattle were reported to have died because of pollution in the river.

A drought that has dragged on for more than two years has made food scarce in Zimbabwe and so the boys waded in to collect the fish, which they could sell to villagers.

Mr Ruzivo said that Owen, whose body was found in a tunnel on Friday, would often go fishing because his father was disabled and unable to pay school fees. He added that his son had been treated at a local hospital for a wounded heel.

A local councillor said that a traditional leader in the area recently lost all his cattle to crocodiles.

Zimbabwe's economy has been in crisis since the early 2000s, which caused a violent land-grab campaign by the veterans of the country's war of independence. White farmers were forced to flee and the country, which used to be known as the bread basket of Africa, suffered economic collapse.

The country has been gripped by a liquidity crisis for much of the past year, leading to riots after the government was unable to pay many of its workers.