Life for wild animals in the Veld is unpredictable—and this video proves it. In 2020, safari guide “Busani” recorded footage of a Nile crocodile successfully hunting and killing a juvenile cheetah.
Busani recorded the intense wildlife interaction at &Beyond Phinda, a private 73,800-acre game reserve in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. The reserve is well-known for its black rhino and cheetah sightings. In this case, Busani spotted a female cheetah with two juveniles near a waterhole — as well as a crocodile lurking nearby.
“What followed was sad and hard to watch for Busani,” explained WildEarth, who shared the video on YouTube. “Sometimes, nature can be harsh and difficult to understand. While we would prefer scenes like this to have happier endings, every animal has its role to play in the ‘circle of life,’ even the crocodile.”
The video shows one of the juvenile cheetahs timidly licking water from the side of the watering hole. Then, suddenly, the crocodile lunges out of the water and latches down on the cheetah’s neck, before dragging the big cat into the water. The cat thrashes the surface of the water for a couple of moments, then the water goes still. Meanwhile, the other cheetahs look confusedly at the water. It’s a brutal but compelling sequence of events. See it for yourself below.
Crocodiles, which are known to have one of the strongest bites on the planet, have dominated several recent Field & Stream headlines. For instance, a crocodile was filmed playing tug of war with a lioness over a zebra carcass. In May, an Australian man somehow escaped after a crocodile chomped on his head. The cheetah in this video, though, wasn’t so lucky.
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