A horrifying video from a zoo in the Philippines shows what happened after a man climbed the fence into an enclosure with a crocodile, mistaking the animal for a statue and hoping to take a selfie with it. Unfortunately for the man, the crocodile was real, and it attacked him after he entered the water with it and began to pose with his cellphone. The man survived, but it was a harrowing ordeal for him and everyone who witnessed the scene.
New York Post reports that the crocodile had the man trapped, his leg between its jaws, for about 30 minutes as zoo staff scrambled to rescue him. The injured man required more than 50 stitches in his arm and leg.
[RELATED: WATCH: Eerie Footage of a Crocodile Swimming Underwater]
Daily Mail reports the 29-year-old visitor believed he was looking at a 15-foot statue of a crocodile and felt so confident the reptile was fake that he bet his life on it. Crocodiles and their relatives, alligators, can stay very still for a very long time. As ambush predators, they use this tactic to hunt—lying in wait until the right time to pounce.
There is footage of the incident. I couldn’t watch the video of the crocodile-selfie gone wrong, but if you really want to, here it is.
Header image by Andrea Pistolesi via Getty