Hippos vs Lion: When predator becomes prey [video]

The king of the jungle almost met his maker recently after finding himself stranded on a rock, surrounded by hippos in a river at South Post at the Kruger National Park.

In a video shared by Kruger Sightings on YouTube on Tuesday, a lone lion is said to have attempted to swim across the river, when he decided to run for safety after spotting a bloat of hippos.

The hippos can be seen surrounding the lion, ready to pounce, as the big cat holds on to the rock for dear life.

While lions are usually strong contenders in a fight, this one knew he was out of his depth and decided to wait it out.

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One of the hippos, however, runs out of patience and charges towards the lion, which decides to jump into the river and swims away.

However, the lion unfortunately swims towards another hippo that was under the water and gets attacked again.

Luckily, it manages to get away.

Watch the video below shared by Kruger Sightings on YouTube:

While most comments noted how lucky the lion was to have survived the ordeal, Dominic said the hippos probably had no intention to kill the lion, but only wanted it out of their territory.

“That’s the difference between predators that have to eat meat to survive. That hippo turned away once he achieved his goal and the one that was hiding in the water closer to the shore just jumped out of the way probably out of fear.

“The hippos wanted to scare rather than kill and they understand that on land potentially the situation will be different. They should have finished the job because the Lions remember. There will be a hippo meal,” Dominic commented.

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Mr Techie shared the same sentiments, commenting: “A male lion is strong enough to fatally wound even a hippo. All smart animals try their best to avoid injury including lions and hippos. Hippos wanted to scare the lion away, not fight him”.