The Koorana Crocodile Farm in Queensland, Australia, is already home to approximately 3,000 reptile residents, but its owners have recently noticed an aphrodisiac that makes their population expand further: helicopters. Specifically, low-flying Chinook military helicopters.
Foods such as chocolates and oysters are famous examples of human aphrodisiacs, but crocodiles on a farm in Australia have found something even weirder to get them going. It appears nearby, since the Singaporean armed forces began joint training exercises, that military-grade Chinook helicopters send the crocs into a mating frenzy.
Nobody is quite certain what it is about these choppers that excites the crocodiles. One theory is that the males mistake the sound of the choppers for roaring thunder. This would be a sign of the wet season, when crocodiles ideally mate, and they have been known to mate as a result of heavy thunderstorms in the past.
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It’s also possible that even if it’s not the sound of thunder that the crocodiles recognize, the chinooks create a temporary drop in barometric pressure which tricks the animals into thinking there is a storm coming.
“The crocodiles start vocalizing to each other [when the choppers fly over],” John Lever, the farm’s owner, explained. “All of the big males got up and roared and bellowed at the sky…And then after the helicopters left they mated like mad.”
“They don’t have a very sophisticated voice box,” Lever continued “But they vibrate their windpipes to send messages through the water.”
According to Australia’s ABC News, crocodile mating is not a particularly romantic transaction. The bull apparently “clutches the female underwater to align their cloacae – the cavities into which their respective intestinal, urinary and genital tracts all open – and activating the latter organ.”
In just a matter of minutes, the deed is done. But for places like Koorana Crocodile Farm, it’s a crucial few minutes each time it comes around and Lever might be hoping for more military operations in the area.
The farm is used by pilots in the Singapore Armed Forces as a marker to change course mid-flight. They have been using the region (the farm is located northeast of the city of Rockhampton) for bilateral training exercises for years, with Australia and Singapore signing an even bigger training treaty in 2020.
It is expected that some 14,000 Singapore armed forces personnel could conduct unilateral training in Queensland for up to 18 weeks each year over the next quarter century. One imagines Lever and Co. at the Koorana farm will be looking forward to the increased presence.
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