Several young lions encountered a freshwater crab recently in South Africa and seemed unsure how to react to the feisty little crustacean.
The accompanying footage, captured in MalaMala Game Reserve, shows the four-inch crab taking a defensive stand, pincers raised, when approached by the first young lion.
Rather than risk being pinched, the lion simply lies down and watches the crab as it tries to cross to a nearby river bank – an action typically carried out at night.
But another sub-adult lion begins to stalk the crab, and soon it’s surrounded.
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But the lions seem more curious than predatory – after all, the crab is snapping its pincers and lions have soft noses. Ultimately, the crab retreats safely into its burrow.
The unusual encounter was featured by Latest Sighings with a video uploaded to Facebook, and a longer version to YouTube.
In a blog post describing the encounter as “Clawsome,” Latest Sightings explained that the lions are part of the Kambula pride and the footage was captured by rangers Ruggiero Barreto, 30, and Robyn Sewell, 27.
One of the rangers was quoted:
“We left the camp at sunrise with the hope of finding lions and were lucky enough to find a pride at a riverbank. They were sheltering from the wind in the Mlowathi Riverbed and were sleeping so we thought we would drive on and look back a little later.
“But suddenly we noticed one of the sub-adults get up and start staring at something and at first we thought it was a scorpion but it was a crab….
“The poor little fella was trying to make it to the riverbank where its burrow was when more lions came over to check it out until there were five of them. The crab kept its claws up at the lions as it backed up until it made the bank and disappeared into a burrow and then the young lions lost interest.
“Not many betting people would have given the crab good odds on making it across the river past a pride of lions but this little fella was up for it.”
–Images courtesy of LatestSightings.com