WATCHBANDS OR BIRKIN BAGS PART TWO

In nature,an alligators home range can exceed twelve square miles,yet at the Teaxas facility,groups of one hundrad and twenty five alligatore are confined to crowded pits no bigger than one hundrad and sixty square feet.They are killed when they are just one year old and their skins are made into watchbands that fetch as much as two thousand dollars on the luxury market.In Zinbabwe,at one of the worlds largest exporters of Nile crocodile skins,the investigators saw tens of thousands of crocodiles of different ages and sizes confined to concrete pits.They are never given the opportunity to roam,forage for food,dig tunnels or do many other things that they would  be doing in their natural habitat.The facility director described the slaughter process in grusome detail to P.E.T.A.s investigators.First workers shock the crocodiles with an electric stunner.Next,they plunge a scalpal into the crocodiles spine and ram a flexible rod down their spinal column to try to destroy the spinal cord.Finally a pointy rod is driven into the crocodiles skull,in an attempt to scramble the brain.Nile crocodiles can live up to seventy years or more in the wild,but crocodiles at the Zimbabwe facility are slaughtered when they are about three years old.After that their skins are turned into luxury products,such as Birkin bags by Hermes,which are sold for forty thousand dollars or more.Each handbag comprises the belly skins of three or four crocodiles.