When capturing large fish, they often drag the fish onto shore and swing their heads around to smash the fish onto the ground until it is dead or incapacitated. More modestly sized fish are generally swallowed whole. The Nile crocodile has a reputation as a voracious and destructive feeder on freshwater fish, many of which are essential to the livelihoods of local fisherman and the industry of sport fishing. However, this is very much an unearned reputation. As cold-blooded creatures, Nile crocodiles need to eat far less compared to an equivalent-weighted warm-blooded animal. The crocodile of consumes an average of fish per day. In comparison, piscivorous water birds from Africa eat far more per day despite being a fraction of the body size of a crocodile, for example a cormorant eats up to per day (about 70% of its own body weight), while a pelican consumes up to per day (about 35% of its own weight). The taking of commercially important fish, such as "Tilapia", has been mentioned as a source of conflict between humans and crocodiles, and used as justification for crocodile-culling operations; however, even a primarily piscivorous crocodile needs relatively so little fish that it cannot deplete fish populations on its own without other (often anthropogenic) influences. Additionally, crocodiles readily take dead or dying fish given the opportunity, thus are likely to incidentally improve the health of some fish species’ populations as this lessens their exposure to diseases and infection.