Croc snaps up a wrong number

A CROCODILE in a Ukrainian zoo is off his food after swallowing a mobile phone.

Gena, a 14-year-old crocodile at an aquarium in the eastern city of Dnipropetrovsk, has been refusing food and acting listless after eating a Nokia phone dropped by a woman as she tried to photograph him.

Aquarium workers initially didn't believe Rimma Golovko, a mother in her 20s, when she complained that the crocodile had swallowed her phone.

"But then the phone started ringing and the sound was coming from inside our Gena's stomach and we understood Ms Golovko wasn't lying," said a spokesman.