Getting Up Close - to a Crocodile!

Could you jump onto the back of a live crocodile? 

Waterton capturing the cayman.  Original painting by his friend Captain Edwin Jones. 

That’s exactly what local explorer Charles Waterton did in Guyana in the 1820s. The cayman – a type of South American crocodile is one of Wakefield Museum’s scariest exhibits (after some of the museum staff before they’ve had coffee!) and the museum designers are working out how to give visitors a Waterton eye view of the reptile. Current plans are to put the beast under the floor with a glass top. 

Plan of the Waterton section of the museum - we hope the cayman will be placed under the middle of the floor!

As well as getting close to it, the display will also highlight other items which Waterton displayed with it, such as the ropes and hooks used to catch it which were very hard to see in the last display.

A close up of the original hook and tackle used to capture the cayman.