Baboon Vs Croc
Tsavo West National park, Kenya / October 2022 / 17:00
This is a young yellow Baboon caught by a young Crocodile.
When I arrived on sight I saw many many Baboons in the dry river bank of the Tsavo river. I saw that there was a baboon in a puddle. I thought how original is this i want to make of a video of this baboon having a bath.... this is so unusual! So i began to film it and after a few seconds i saw that it was very strange, baboons were totally stressed and watching at this baboon in the water. They began to scream like crazy when he tried to get out of the water so I thought for one second that it was a big fight between baboons and that this one was escaping from the others in the middle of the puddle. Then i quickly saw that the baboon was not having a bath but was caught by a croc. When he decided to move or to try to escape from the jaws of the crochet croc was taking him back to the water and was drowning him.... happily for the baboon there was not a lot of water and he managed to keep the head out of the water each time so that he could breathe. The most impressive was that the water puddle was surrounded by hundreds of baboons that were watching this drama. In silence when the baboon was not moving but they were all screamed together very loudly each time there was a try to escape. That was very loud and dramatic. The Baboon tried several times to escape but it was caught by an arm quite deep in the Croc’s throat. When he was not trying to escape from croc he was staying very very calm as if he understood that moving represented the danger of being drowned if the croc was going further where water was deeper. He was expecting the good moment to try again and again and was getting closer from the edge where he could have more support with the ground. After several tries he managed finally to escape, he joined the group and they all went away from there. He was injured in the face so I can imagine easily that the croc caught him by the head while he was drinking in the river. Some baboons (young ones mostly) stayed there to watch this puddle with big curiosity.
© Nicolas Urlacher