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What island is surrounded by crocodiles?

A subject of much debate and intrigue among World War II historians, the story of how hundreds of Japanese troops met their gruesome fate in the crocodile-infested marshes of Ramree Island became so widely believed that it was included in the Guinness Book of World Records under the entry for most fatalities in a ...



The most famous island associated with a dense and dangerous crocodile population is Ramree Island off the coast of Myanmar (Burma). It is notorious for the "Battle of Ramree Island" during World War II, where hundreds of Japanese soldiers reportedly perished in the mangrove swamps, many allegedly falling victim to the island's massive saltwater crocodiles. Another notable location is Caiman Island in various tropical regions, but specifically in Northern Australia, islands like Crocodile Island (part of the Millingimbi group) are literally surrounded by some of the largest saltwater crocodiles on Earth. These apex predators are capable of swimming long distances in the open ocean, making every shoreline in the Northern Territory a potential habitat. In the Americas, Cozumel and parts of the Florida Keys have localized populations, but they don't define the island's perimeter in the same terrifying way as the reptiles in the Indo-Pacific. For travelers, these islands serve as a stark reminder that in certain ecosystems, the water's edge is a hard boundary where humans are no longer at the top of the food chain, requiring extreme caution and local knowledge to navigate safely.

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These were the questions facing the Japanese troops occupying Ramree Island in the Bay of Bengal during World War II in early 1945. Those who survived the battle reportedly didn't fare well when they chose the doomed escape route across the crocodile-infested waters.

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They are known to be fantastic swimmers and can travel long distances by sea, sometimes as much as 900km. Saltwater crocodiles aren't particularly strong swimmers, yet there have been many reports of sightings in the open ocean, far from land.

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North Sentinel Island, India In the Bay of Bengal sit the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, most of which are Indian territories. The Sentinelese tribe of North Sentinel Island is thought to have been there for 60,000 years, and it's one of the last communities in the world to remain totally isolated from outside societies.

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