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Surviving a Hippo Attack | Something Bit Me! | National Geographic


3m read
·Nov 10, 2024

Deep beneath the surface of the Zambezi River in Zimbabwe, Africa, Kristen Yaldor is trapped in the jaws of a hippopotamus. As she struggles to free herself, the animal refuses to let go, ragdolling her back and forth. Hippos wouldn't necessarily just drag their victims underwater like a crocodile; they're not predatory species; they actually just eat grass. So when Kristen got dragged underwater, it's likely that the hippo was actually just returning to where it's comfortable, underwater, where it knew that it had the advantage to make sure that it eliminated any threat that it felt from Kristin's canoe.

"I was almost out of air and I started to re-swallow my air, knowing that that might help me conserve my air in staying calm and allowing me to try to survive in this moment because I didn't know how long this was going to last." The hippo can hold its breath for two, three, five minutes; Kristen, being shook around, probably doesn't have much more than 30 seconds of air, and so it's likely gonna last longer than she is. "I had to try something. I grabbed its mouth to try to pry it open, and it didn't budge. I'm not strong enough to do that." I instinctively then just curled up to try to conserve my breath and not be thrown around so much underwater, and somehow it let me go.

It's possible that when Kristen grabbed onto the hippo's snout, it actually got spooked and let go of her. There are very few animals that a hippo would have bid on to that would have had the same reaction, and it's possible that that actually saved her life. "So what seemed like forever, I'm standing there screaming in a panic, and all of a sudden, Kristen does pop to the surface." I immediately saw Ryan running on the shoreline with a terrified look on his face.

"I immediately started to paddle towards Ryan and the guides, but I couldn't swim; my leg wouldn't work. I screamed for help and somehow instinctively turned over and backstroked, drifting downriver on my back, stroking with my arms, trying to push myself."

At this point, I'm like, could this hippo come back? Is there a crocodile upriver? Whatever I needed to do to get over there to help the guides get her out of the river so that the water just didn't carry her, you know, continually towards the falls. Because, you know, that's where this river is going, is over to Victoria Falls. If she passes us, there's nobody around.

"I couldn't hear anything; I was just focused on myself trying to get to shore." Then I heard the guide say, "Reach for the canoe paddle." Ryan and a guide pulled Kristen ashore, where they got a clear look at the massive damage the hippo did to her leg.

"When I looked down, I could see that my leg was torn open; my skin was ripped off of my leg and is laying on the side of my leg, and I could see part of my muscle that was torn off sitting on top of my thigh." Hippos have these incredible weapons in their mouths, where they have these two canine tusks the size of a flexed human arm. But they don't actually use them to eat; what they use the teeth for is to defend their territories and to attack other territorial males.

Kristen at this point is repeating, "I need help before I bleed out." I knew I had limited time if I was bleeding out, so my panic and my instructions to the guides were I needed help immediately; otherwise, I was going to die here.

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