LEPIDUS: What manner o’ thing is your crocodile?
ANTONY: It is shaped, sir, like itself; and it is as broad as it hath breadth: it is just so high as it is, and moves with its own organs: it lives by that
which nourisheth it; and the elements once out of it, it transmigrates.

– William Shakespeare

Antony and Cleopatra, Act 2, Scene 7.