Baby African crocodile found on Russian building site

Street cleaners found a baby African crocodile at a construction site in St. Petersburg. The creature, which is just a few days old and under 50 centimeters long, lives in temperatures of 25 degrees Celsius and higher and was all but frozen to death when the janitors spotted it on Tuesday.

The animal might have got into a rubbish bag by accident and been thrown away by the owner, a municipal housing official said. Alternatively, the crocodile could have been brought to Russia as an egg, which its owners could have mistaken for the egg of an ostrich and thrown away after seeing that what hatched out didn't look like a bird, experts at the local zoo said.

Municipal housing officials gave the animal a temporary shelter in their office, placing it in an aquarium filled with sand and feeding it beef and water. The animal has now been transferred to quarantine center Veles in the Leningrad region for temporary keeping until a permanent home is found for it.

The local zoo and aquarium refused to take the beast, with the zoo officials saying it would grow to be three to four meters long and the zoo's premises had no capacities to keep such a big animal. The quarantine center will also look to move the animal. “We don't need crocodiles, especially the African ones: they are angry,” Veles director Alexander Fyodorov said.