A 10-year-old has tragically passed away after getting snatched by a large crocodile while he and his siblings were paddling on a small wooden boat in the Philippines.
The incident occurred in the Balabac region located in the southern Palawan island group where the locals and the crocodiles often have undesired confrontations because they share the same environment.
According to the reports, the 10-year-old boy has dragged off a small boat into the water and that was the last time he was seen alive.
The boy’s horrified children quickly alerted their father who spent the entire night searching for his son with little success.
One day after the incident, a fisherman discovered the child’s lifeless, half-eaten body in a nearby mangrove swamp.
As the authorities explained, the ever-growing development and population are calling for expansion into natural habitats, resulting in humans crossing paths with wild beasts.
“Since 2015, we’ve never had a year with zero crocodile attacks. It’s a conflict on water use,” Jovic Pabello of the environment conservation government council said.
The saltwater crocodiles, also known as estuarine crocodiles, are territorial reptiles that can grow up to 20 feet long and weigh one ton.
Just last year, a Balabac fisherman was attacked and eaten by a crocodile only three months after his 12-year-old niece suffered the same fate.
Earlier this year, a father of a 12-year-old boy from Balabac was dubbed a hero dad after rescuing his son from the jaws of a crocodile that attacked him in a river near their home.
The Filipino dad, Tejada Abulhasan, used a rather unconventional weapon for fighting the crocodile – his teeth! After hearing the screams of his young son, Diego Abulhasan, the worried father ran to the river where his son was swimming together with his brother.
As he arrived at the scene armed with a wooden plank, the crocodile already had the boy’s leg between its jaws. The father immediately jumped into the water and began hitting the crocodile with a plank and punching its snout.
Despite all the efforts, however, the crocodile wouldn’t let go. That’s when Tejada turned into a beast and grabbed the croc’s leg before biting it several times.
According to the dad, he was biting “like a Rottweiler” during his rescue mission. And apparently, that must have been true, because the crocodile released the boy from its grip after it got bitten in its leg by the man.
“There was so much adrenaline in my body I had no time to think. I was hitting the crocodile and it would not release my boy. I was wrestling the crocodile and we looked in each other’s eyes,” Tejada said.
“Then out of nowhere, I had the idea to bite him. I grabbed his leg and just bit as hard as I could like a Rottweiler dog.”
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