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Storytime about the time that I recently got face-to-face with not one or two, but over a dozen gigantic, I'm talking 16-ft long man-eating Nile crocodiles. [music] To figure out what it's like to be the perspective of prey.
Forrest Galante shares his harrowing experience face-to-face with 16-ft Nile crocodiles to understand prey perspective.
Ask about this video. Answers come from its transcript only — with the timestamp, so you can check them.
Generated from the transcript and can be wrong — check the timestamp.
Key Takeaways
- Close encounters with wild predators require extensive planning and safety measures.
- Nile crocodiles are powerful and intelligent apex predators with a terrifying bite force.
- Understanding predator-prey dynamics can foster respect and caution in human interactions with wildlife.
- Experiencing nature from a prey perspective offers unique insights into animal behavior.
- Wildlife documentaries often involve high-risk stunts to educate and engage audiences.
What the video covers
- Forrest Galante recounts his close encounter with over a dozen massive Nile crocodiles in Zimbabwe.
- He explains his lifelong fascination with crocodiles, growing up around them in Lake Kariba.
- Galante describes the planning and engineering of a minimal cage to safely interact with the crocodiles in water.
- He details the dangers involved, including the risk of drowning and crocodile attacks.
- The video covers the process of baiting the crocodiles and lowering himself into the water inside the cage.
- Galante shares his adrenaline-fueled experience observing the crocodiles’ feeding behavior up close.
- He emphasizes the intelligence and power of these apex predators.
- The experiment aims to give viewers insight into the perspective of prey animals facing crocodile attacks.
- Galante reflects on the respect and fear humans should have for crocodiles.
- The video concludes with a message about appreciating and understanding these ancient predators.
Chapters
- 00:00Introduction: Facing Nile Crocodiles
- 01:02Forrest’s Crocodile Fascination and Background
- 01:56The Danger and Challenge of the Experiment
- 02:36Designing the Cage for the Encounter
- 03:29Finalizing the Minimal Cage Setup
- 04:17Safety Measures and Lowering into the Water
- 05:10Observing Crocodiles Feeding Up Close
- 06:06Overcoming Fear and Commitment to the Experiment
- 07:07Baiting and Preparing for the Encounter
Full Transcript — Download SRT & Markdown
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Jesus Christ. Oh, my God. Now, why would I do this, you'd be asking yourself? Well, [music] before I explain what the experiment was and just how crazy it was, I'm going to tell you about [clears throat] [music] how it came about. Like all wildlife
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presenters that you've ever watched, I had an immense fascination [music] with crocodiles from a very young age. I grew up in Zimbabwe and we had crocodiles in Lake Kariba and I loved them. I just thought these were big
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dinosaur-like lizards that could ambush people, stealth attack, catch anything. They haven't changed in historical evolution for tens of millions, hundreds of millions of years and I just thought these are the coolest animals. And there's a reason [music] that the Steve
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Irwins, the Jeff Corwins, the Jack Hannas of the world all are fascinated by these crazy dinosaur-like crocodiles.
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So, growing up and having Nile crocodiles right around me in Zimbabwe, I was just fascinated by them. I moved to America, I went to Florida and caught alligators. I wanted to see American crocodiles, so I went to Costa Rica,
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traveled all over South America, even the Rio Apaporis came in, which is of course the extinct crocodilian that we caught. [music] I'm just in love with these animals. So, when Discovery Channel came along and said, "Forrest, we want you to do a show about what it's
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like to be prey for animals." First of all, I was like, "What? You're crazy." And secondly, I was like, "All right, well, I'm obsessed with crocodiles and I don't think that anybody has really ever been eye-line face-to-face [music] with
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crocodiles. So, I'll do this show, this whole series just basically because of my intense fascination for understanding this for one animal." Question was, "How do I do this crazy thing?" Now, it's one thing to be, you know, eye-line with a
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hyena knowing that they can't bite through an acrylic [music] box, but crocodiles are their whole own thing.
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Not only can a crocodile grab you, rip you limb from limb, death roll, and rip you to shreds, but if something goes wrong, you're going to drown because we have to be on their terms. We have to be
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in the water. So, I had to come up with this entire setup, this entire idea of how am I going to get face-to-face with a crocodile.
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[music] Now, where am I going to go to do that? Well, I'm going to go to my home country. I'm going to go to Zimbabwe, where I know there are so many crocodiles. And so, I head back to
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Zimbabwe, [music] I link up with an old buddy. We source all these materials, we find some builders, design this thing.
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Imagine you're in the Serengeti and you're watching the wildebeest come through the river and the crocodiles are snatching them up. So, that's the [music] idea. We're like, "How do I get into a wildebeest?" Well, that's not possible. So, then it was like, "All
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right, well, how do I get in that same [music] sort of ethos, where I'm splashing around and the crocodiles are coming in to feed and they're going for me?" Okay, so here's what we'll do.
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[music] We'll build a cage that's on these big floats, and the cage will submerge [music] partially on these floats, so the crocodiles can come in.
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So, we start designing this thing. This cage [music] is like huge. It ends up being like, I don't know, 4 ft wide, probably 7 ft long, these huge arms and floats. And I get there while the guys are designing it, and I look
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[music] at this design and I'm looking at it and I'm going, "Okay, I'm going to be lying belly down in this thing, but the arms, in order [music] to float this thing, are like 8 ft in any direction. This box is
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enormous. I'm like, this isn't it. You know, we need something that is [music] minimal, eye-to-eye, no floats." I basically just built a boat with a cage around it. I'm like, "That isn't it." [music] So, we go back to the drawing board, we
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strip off all the floats, we condense the cage way down, and I come back and it's basically just a chicken wire box.
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I mean, I'm talking about a little coffin box with nothing but [music] cage material around. It's like, "Okay, that'll do it, except there's no floats.
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So, what's going to happen now? I'm going to put this in the water, I'm going to sink to my death." And this is not exactly crystal clear water. This is African pan [music] water, where the water's green and murky and muddy and
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just generally disgusting. We come up with this system where we have this pool that's loaded with these crocodiles. And we decide that what we're going to do is we're going to go to a tree, a tree like this, and fix a pulley system that
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goes off the top of the cage, so that the cage is incredibly minimal. There's no footprint on the water except for basically me splashing my silhouette [music] and the cage around me. And then we're going to pull the cage out and
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then gently lower it. So it requires [music] guys on either bank pulling, and then guys on the winch system to lower.
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So it's this huge elaborate thing. We end up having all the guys from the workshop who built it, [music] 10 plus other guys there, um the safety supervisor, this whole thing because [music] of course it was a Discovery
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show, so it wasn't just me and me and the boys here. Takes a while. We build all this thing. We find the perfect location in the pool with all the crocodiles, everything. And we're all set. And all of a sudden it's feeling
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really real. I check on the crocodiles. I throw them a cow leg, and I see these crocodiles like come out. They're ripping, and I'm talking about not like eight or nine foot crocodiles. I'm talking about 16 foot Nile crocodiles
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that take the entire side of beef and [music] rip it to shreds, crunching through bone with that thousand plus PSI bite force like it's me eating a stick of butter. Like if I picked up a celery stick and was like,
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That's what it was like watching these things eat this cow bone. So all of a sudden I'm sitting there, and it's funny 'cause my adrenaline's going like this, you [music] know, and I'm shaking. Look, I'm getting goosebumps talking about it. And
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I'm shaking, and I'm looking at this pool, and I look around, and there's [music] four camera guys, a safety guy, 10 supervisors, my buddy who I built all this with, and I'm like what the hell am I doing? So I kind of
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have this reality check, and I'm like all of this to try and better understand what it's like to be on eye level with a crocodile from a prey perspective. And I'm like I want to pull the plug.
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And I'm thinking I'm having this sort of inner inner monologue with myself, I'm looking there's all these guys and the last bits are getting into place and I'm like I want to pull the plug on this.
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And I'm like look around there's all these crew here and I'm like I can't like I've gone so far [music] we've put all this together we've been planning this for for a year basically built everything we've poured tons of
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resources into this [gasps] we got to do it. So we load up and we decide that you know these crocodiles need to come in and take bait. So we put four quarters of a cow on on this box and then we put a
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cow's head on the front [music] of the box. Now the problem is with the cow head and the big horns on the front of the box I can't see out and the camera [music] can't see into me. So we
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scrapped the head. Head comes off and now it's just little old me sitting in this [music] box hanging on getting buckled in with four giant chunks of meat [music] and they're going to lower me over in this winch system and then lower me down
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so these crocodiles can come in and attack and I can be like [music] this while I'm in the water. Now as I mentioned before the biggest concern truthfully even more than the crocodiles getting to me was drowning because if something went wrong with o
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pulley system what would happen was the cage would snap sink down into the water under the mud and there's no way to get to me cuz there's 15 plus gigantic crocodiles [music] around and the guys can't get me out. So we come up with
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this idea which is that man it's funny reliving it cuz it was really scary. We come up with this idea which is that we're going to strap a scuba tank in I'm going to have a regulator. If something goes wrong and
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the cable snaps then as I sink down there's the the rope that the guys are using to pulley it across the the pool and back and they'll get everybody on that they'll get a truck and they'll pull it out with a winch.
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Done. Okay fine. Scuba tank 10 ft of water maybe less I'll survive [music] for 45 minutes no problem. So we set all this up guess what can't get a truck in there. So we do do whole thing to figure out that if the
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cable snap, it's going to come down to hoping that the guys can pull me out with the ropes because there's a pulley, but it's not nearly strong enough to pull what's probably a thousand pounds by the time you add up the cage and me
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out by hand. And so now my nerves are on level 10. So like I said, I'm on the edge of the bank. I'm thinking about pulling the plug. I look around, all these people, all these resources. I'm like, "This is it. We got to go. Don't
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think about it anymore. We got to go." They wiggle the cameras, GoPros everywhere. There's a drone, there's camera guys everywhere. And this is basically a stunt to be clear. It's important cuz it's great to understand what it's like to be on the perspective
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of a feeding apex predator like a crocodile and have that and share that with the world and respect those animals and learn how to mitigate attacks, but it's still sort of a stunt. Here I go.
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Climb into the box. We put kind of this little handrail in so I don't stick my fingers through. Get in. Look at the guys. Say, "Let's go." Actually haven't shared this and I'm hoping it doesn't end up in the episode, but I say to the
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GoPro, "To my beautiful wife and my two kids, something goes wrong, I love you guys so much and I'm kind of sorry that I'm even doing this, but I do think it's important for the reasons I just mentioned.
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And here we go." So they start to lift me. I come up. I'm lying flat on my belly, keep in mind, in this very uncomfortable box. They lift me. And all of a sudden I'm just off the ground. Now I'm hovering and I'm
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like, "Okay, I'm good to go. Pull me out." So they start to pull me out over the croc pond. And you can see the crocs are like, mhm, like they're already looking up at me, looking up at the
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meat. And it's like, "Wow, it's it's happening." And as I'm just cresting the bank to go over the water where there's probably at this point already six crocs waiting for me, the the whole [music] cable thing goes kachush.
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Where the center is. Whoa. We don't have What was that? And this thing doesn't snap, but I don't know what happened. I don't know if a pulley adjusted. I don't know what took place, but it dropped like a foot.
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[music] And right then and there for that split second, I thought I was dead.
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I thought the box was going to drop, the crocs may or may not get into me, [music] but I'm going to drown for sure. They're never going to get this box out. It bounced, it settled, and I'm just
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suspended over these crocs. And I'm like, "Oh god." Like totally white-knuckling it. So, we wait, the box settles, [music] you know, the bouncing kind of stops, and it's like the guys on the bank safety guys are like, "We
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should pull the plug. We should pull the plug." And I'm like, "Nope. Haven't snapped. Something was adjusting. Maybe it was just tension. [music] Keep moving." So, we keep moving the croc coffin out over the pool. I look down, and this [music] is something that
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I don't know if anybody's ever seen, but I'm lying on my belly looking down, and there are probably about six at this point in time crocodiles looking up at me like [music] this. Like, "What are you?" And of course there's meat draped
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around, right? So, we're lying there, and I say, "Let's go." So, they start to lower the cage down.
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And all of a sudden, my stomach touches the water, and the cold water sort of shocks me. I get these goosebumps.
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"Lower." And they lower it down. "Lower." They lower it down. Now I'm here. The water's right up to here as I'm lying on my belly, and I'm looking around. And what's so interesting, and shows crocodiles intelligence and their
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evolutionary design, is you think these guys are just going to come in and whoosh.
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Not at all. The crocodiles look at this and go, "What is this?" They're like assessing the scenario. They know that we know that they're there. And the thing about a crocodile are an ambush predator that relies on surprise. So,
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when they know that we know [music] that they're there, they show a lot of caution. But, that instinct drives them.
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So, they look at me, they assess the situation, and this whole time I've seen these big crocs, right? Like I said, up to 16 ft. Then all of a sudden, out of this tiny pool, out of the murk,
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this like 18-footer emerges. Now, the difference between a 16- and 18-ft crocodile might not sound like much, but But not about the 2-ft difference length that they grow, it's about the mass and the width. So this 18-foot croc is
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obviously the dominant [music] crocodile of the pool, and it it rises up, it looks at me, and it just starts to with its tail, and it comes in, and it first it like noses up, and you could see it's kind of looking, it's looking
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at me, it's looking at the meat. And then out of nowhere, boom! Jesus Christ!
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Just smashes the meat. Boom! The cage is going like this. Keep in mind I'm suspended from the cable. I'm rocking around like this. It's crazy, there's water [music] splashing everywhere, and that was the indicator that the other crocodiles need. So as this first
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crocodile came in and hit the meat, [music] and my heart literally jumped into my throat, and it felt like the cage was going to erupt and break [music] from its strength, and sink into the bottom or or get through to me, all
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of the other crocodiles, it was like ringing the dinner [music] bell. So all of a sudden this gigantic one that appeared out of nowhere said, "This is food." Seven, eight other crocodiles came in, [music] and I saw something unbelievable. I saw
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these crocodiles approach at eye level, literally [music] like this, eye to eye, go for the meat. And as this went on, it went on for a while, as you'll see in the footage, but as this went on, the crocodiles
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fed, don't get me wrong, and they wanted the meat, but they began to not care about the meat, and they started to lock in on me. They could tell that there was something they wanted. There was a creamy filling inside of that bun, and
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they wanted to get to it. And so they started nosing into the cage. I felt one at one point come up and go boom underneath like it was trying to get [music] through to my belly, to my soft
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underbelly, to eat me, and it was just this absolutely insane rodeo as the water was splashing around, these crocodiles were coming in.
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Anyway, long [music] story made short, I sat there. I got to witness how amazing these apex predators of evolution were.
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I was eye level these incredible crocodiles and something that in conception and ideation felt perfect but in execution was so unbelievably terrifying and it doesn't matter who you are the instinct to not be in the perspective of prey of a predator like a crocodile an
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animal that's been around longer than human beings as they approach look I'm starting to get nervous talking about as they approach you to try and kill you [music] and that's what they want to do and as you sit there and you see these
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crocodiles come in it's just it goes against every instinct in your body to not flee or run or fight but I was literally locked into the cage witnessing this so we did this whole stunt the meat ended the crocodiles kind
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of realized they weren't getting into the gooey filling and they started to dissipate so we we brought the cage back out big celebration as we ended it but the whole point of the stunt and you may be asking yourself why do a stunt like
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this why do a wildlife thing was to try and show people how amazing these predators are to understand how powerful they are so that human beings can hopefully learn from this understand these crocodiles appreciate and respect them but also fear them enough to give
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them their space be aware try and mitigate human wildlife conflict with these animals don't go splash in a creek or a river where we know there's crocodiles [music] but you think there aren't shows the way that 18 footer just emerged out of
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nowhere how the biggest animals can be in the smallest bodies of water and ambush you perfectly was a crazy amazing stunt I'm glad I did it it's not something I want to do for the rest of my life but
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to do something like that and show the raw magnificence and power of these animals [music] was a very very cool experience and I hope you guys enjoyed seeing the visuals I enjoyed telling the story let me know in the comments below if you enjoyed the
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story what other animals you would like to see from the perspective of prey [music] because we are doing that experiment seven more times in our new series on Discovery [music] Channel hey make sure you subscribe for more awesome
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animal stuff see you on the next story time
Topics:Forrest GalanteNile crocodileswildlife encounterpredator prey perspectivecrocodile attackanimal behaviorwildlife documentaryZimbabwecrocodile cagedangerous animals
