While writing about our Ethiopia days, I found this finding. Let’s see if you can see it. I think it is pretty easy but…

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To take this close-up I needed to climb the rocks that are seen behind the croc in the previous picture as to at a safe distance from the “sleeping” beast. That is the reason why the head is pointing to the opposite side in the second picture.

Recently it has been discovered that, as it had been observed in other animals, crocodiles are able to sleep with one-half of their brain at a time, a phenomenon known as unihemispheric sleep. During this kind of sleep the eye neurologically connected to the ‘awake’ hemisphere remains open while the other eye is closed [1].

I was not able to check the condition of its eyes to tell what was it really doing but, in the light of the research mentioned, to ascertain its status would have demanded a close inspection that I had no intention to do and I am quite happy not to know!

[1] See: https://jeb.biologists.org/content/218/20/3175