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Cape Town - When you live and work in the bush, every now and then you get to see how truly mindblowing nature really is.
Nick Kleer, a trainee ranger at Londolozi, recently had one of those transcendent moments when he witnessed an unbelievable showdown between a hippo and a crocodile, over the carcass of a wildebeest. Fortunately for the rest of us out there, he filmed the whole thing.
In a post on the Londolozi blog, he describes how, during a morning game drive, they stumbled across an intense moment at a watering hole: a female wildebeest was standing knee-deep in the water and had a crocodile, firmly attached to her nose. As they approached, they spotted six hyenas circling close by and also heard the 'sawing sound' of a male leopard just out of site.
From across the dam, a hippo was keeping a close eye, and suddenly decided to have a closer look. At first they thought the pachyderm would help her fellow herbivore, but instead launched an attack, fiercely snapping her jaws and biting the flailing creature no less than three times, dealing the ultimate death blow.
The hippo continued bashing the wildebeest's carcass around for a good hour, after which she left it without ceremony and the crocodile retrieved it once more.
