A Nile crocodile was filmed dragging a young cheetah into the water.
Gruesome footage shows a cheetah being swept into the water by a 13-foot crocodile in South Africa. The video was captured by South African safari guide WildEarth Busani Mtshali in the & Beyond Phinda private game reserve, reports the Daily Mail.
The young cheetah had approached the trough for a drink, unaware of the Nile crocodile lurking inside. When the cheetah licked the water, the crocodile emerged in an instant and dragged it underneath. The images show the crocodile leaping out of the water to grab the cheetah cub with its powerful jaws before throwing the fighting animal into the water.
“It’s so painful,” the guide can be heard saying, in the video, according to The Sun. “It’s more than the word painful. There’s really nothing we can do because the crocodile was ambushing the cheetah when the young cheetah cub came down to drink water.”
“On a live safari for WildEarth, & Beyond Phinda, guide Busani Mtshali came across a mother cheetah with two cubs,” WildEarth.TV wrote on Facebook while sharing the images. “As the male cub approached the waterhole to quench his thirst, Busani noticed a crocodile lurking in the nearby water. What followed was sad and difficult to see.”
While we would prefer scenes like this to have happier endings, each animal has its role to play in the ‘circle of life’, even the crocodile, “they added.
The video has gone hugely viral on social media, accumulating millions of views on different platforms.
Nile crocodiles are the largest crocodile species in Africa. They are considered a very aggressive crocodile species with an extremely powerful bite.
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