Nature isn’t all rainbows and sunsets, and nile crocodiles are here to remind us of that fact. In a recent video shared by Nature is Metal, the infamous brutality of this prehistoric species is on full display as an absolute monster of a croc chows down on a baby hippopotamus, just a few minutes old. See it for yourself below, but proceed with caution.
“Even though hippopotami are some of the most temperamental, mean and downright dangerous animals on planet earth, it’s still rough seeing a newborn baby hip getting munched by a prehistoric death machine,” the caption reads. “This might sound crazy, but this newborn, minutes old baby hippo weighs in at between 90 and 110 lbs. This is a huge get for this crocodile, the mystery is how it was able to hornswoggle it away from its hyper vigilant and protective birth mother.”
The short clip is credited to two separate Instagram accounts: @the.wildlife.side and @governorscampcollection. It was captured on the Mara River, a tributary of the Nile River that flows through Kenya and Tanzania. “Upon looking at the images I captured of this, [the baby hippo] appeared to still have the umbilical cord attached,” wrote Frankie Adamson, the wildlife photographer who shot the video. “It just goes to show that crocodiles will take the opportunity for a quick meal, even if it means a snatch and grab from a huge Hippo mother.”
Adult hippos can weigh more nearly 10,000 pounds and measure up to 16 and a half-feet long. The females are famously protective of their young, and the species as a whole is widely regarded as the most dangerous of all the large African megafauna. Previous videos have captured adult hippos fighting off and even killing crocodiles that threatened their young or tried to snatch a food source.
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According to Governors’ Camp Collection, a Kenya-based travel company that shared a different version of Adamson’s video, sights like this are rare on the Mara River, where hippos and crocodiles live alongside each other, usually without coming into conflict. “As opportunistic as crocodiles are – they will often avoid hippos,” Governors’ Camp Collection wrote in the caption for its video. “They know just how aggressive an angry hippo can be.”
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