As dozens of bats swooped down to collect water from the Daintree River in Australia, one crocodile awaited the perfect opportunity to pounce and with “unbelievable precision” leaped up from the water and snatched a bat in midair.
David White, owner of Solar Whisper Daintree River Crocodile and Wildlife Cruises in Queensland, captured the moment in video shot with a backup camera. “Sorry about the quality,” he writes on Facebook, “but the content…you just don’t see this every day.”
https://www.facebook.com/SolarWhisper/videos/967686120783129/
“So after watching these guys for 25 years they are still full of surprises,” White wrote. “Many of you may of seen footage of freshies (freshwater crocs) catching little reds in the NT. Well, where that happens the river is narrow and there are hundreds of thousands of little reds. Not so here, this is a very wide river and there’s not many bats in comparison to when the little reds are here. Though I have seen bats eaten before, it’s when they fall into the river.
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“But take a moment to appreciate the skill involved here by Dusty Rose. She had to work out where to place herself in this wide river and usually she hunts on the edge, then with unbelievable precision she jumps.
“Over the years I have talked to many scientists and I agreed with them that this river is far too wide for the crocs to be successful in catching a bat. Well boy was I wrong.”
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