Great shot (again) Chris.
I'm interested in the life span you talk of.
I saw an amazing documentary about salt water crocodiles in the Northern Territory (Tom Dinning country folks) of Australia.
Australia has two types of Crocs, Johnson River crocodiles (freshies, as in fresh water crocs) and Saltwater Crocodiles.
I've swum with freshies, no big deal, just little fellas of about 6, maybe 8 feet long and fairly shy.
Saltwater crocs are the ones found throughout the world's tropical waters and are ernormous and not shy, they kill and injure people fairly regularly, usually a couple of deaths in Aus each year.
The documentary was following the fortunes of a big old croc in Northern Australia, they freely move into fresh water and can live there indefinitely. Northern Australia has two very distinct wet and dry seasons, basically flood or drought and not much in between.
This croc ate well during the wet season, you know, lots of big fish and plenty of water birds.
Towards the end of the dry season, the waterhole dried up, fish and birdlife disappeared (and of course it's extremely hot).
The big old croc was barely fazed, it simply buried itself in the last of the mud until it was completely dry and waited and waited and waited for many, many weeks until finally the rains came again the cycle started over.
I don't think starvation kills many crocs or alligators.
And also sure I've heard that they can live well over a hundred years (and grow to 30 feet long)!
Such a good shot Chris.