Gustave the Killer Croc
On the shores of Burundi’s Rusizi River lives Gustave the man-eating crocodile. He is quite possibly the world’s largest croc, measuring 20 feet long and weighing a short ton. The article is incredible: it’s amazing how the natives still keep going back to the water, regardless of the fact that hundreds of them are slain by crocodiles.
I think this rather proves my theory that civilisation requires extinction of the megafauna. One cannot have a civilised society in which rampaging elephants or lions or crocodiles can snatch up a child—or a man. It just doesn’t work. My reader will note that all three of those animals are to be found in Africa, and that Africa is, overall, the least civilised of the continents. This is, I think, no coincidence. Australia too has its issues in the Outback—and Australia too is rife with deadly animals.
Here in North America the aboriginal inhabitants killed and ate the majority of the megafauna millennia ago. That worked to their disadvantage (lacking horses, camels or any other domesticable animals they never really got anywhere), but it’s turned out very well for us.
