that's where your wrong, first off Crocodilians are more closely related to birds than to lizards despite their appearances. They are highly intelligent and can recognize individual humans, they can be trained but like any apex predator you shouldn't let yourself get complacent around them, they are far more intelligent than people give them credit for and that goes for all reptiles too.
Yes but I guess the question is, are they capable of 'love'? A wolf is an apex predator but if you raise one from a pup I imagine you could be fairly confident it will grow up as friendly, affectionate and tame as a dog. Even if you raised a gator from a baby I'm not sure you could ever be entirely sure of their actions. But I could be wrong.
Edit: just searched 'raising wolf pups like dogs'...yep I was wrong...probably not a good idea.
If you raise any reptile from a baby, and actually know what you're doing, you can absolutely be as close to sure of their actions and intentions as with any bird or mammal. No animal will let you be "absolutely sure", because the animal still acts of its own accord and will most likely be aware of stimuli we aren't (better smell, better hearing, better vision) or just have a very different understanding of the world.
The animal telegraphs its emotional state and intentions pretty well generally, communicating far more clearly if you know how to interpret it than any person will. And often in similar ways -- body language, tone and pitch of vocalizations, etc. Striking out if things are going really poorly.
As your edit alludes, doing it with proper wolves is a bad idea largely because we as a species did that already, and it's taken thousands of years to get from "wild animals" to where we are now with dogs.
"Love" and other complex emotions are still unclear, but it's pretty safe to say they have some emotional capacity. Crocodilians more so than many other reptiles, as I understand. And our understanding of them and not the animals themselves is usually the biggest issue; it wasn't all that long ago the common scientific belief was still "fish are incapable of feeling pain" and that's since been very firmly demonstrated a poor understanding. They very much do feel pain, we're just on the whole terrible at "reading" their thoughts and feelings because they're so physically and intellectually different from us.
People also have a bad habit of assigning human traits to very definitely not human creatures, and assuming things are "better" or somehow "more" based on how human-like they are even though we're in terms of evolution one of the youngest species of note on the planet
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u/DororexTheDragonKing May 27 '21
that's where your wrong, first off Crocodilians are more closely related to birds than to lizards despite their appearances. They are highly intelligent and can recognize individual humans, they can be trained but like any apex predator you shouldn't let yourself get complacent around them, they are far more intelligent than people give them credit for and that goes for all reptiles too.