Rare video footage of hundreds and possibly thousands of crocodiles invading a beach in Brazil has gone viral, having nearly four million views on Twitter, leaving strange thoughts from the locals aside from fear.
Instagram user ota_lapau uploaded the same video on his account and gained 720 thousand likes.
The beach in Brazil has found itself invaded by a massive number of crocodiles, some people suggested that it has to do with climate change.
The video was originally uploaded on Twitter by Ken Rutkowski, who captioned the tweet by saying the crocodile invasion left local Brazilians panicking.
The large reptile appears to be largely stationary in the video, though some of the crocodiles can be seen slowly making their way toward the water.
The Alleged Invasion
The alleged reptile "invasion" creates an exchange of thoughts from the people who saw the video. The reptiles may also be caimans, which are more closely related to the alligator species than the crocodiles.
According to a tweet by zoology enthusiast @DrWildlife, he responded to the main tweet saying that "This is not an invasion and locals are not panicking."
He added that the region seen in the footage is part of the Pantanal, which is the largest tropical wetland in the world.
According to World Wildlife Fund Org., the world's largest tropical wetland is situated in the heart of South America, with a land mass of 42 million acres. The wetland is slightly larger compared to England and sprawls across three Latin American countries-Bolivia, Paraguay, and Brazil.
Spectacled caiman, Caiman crocodilus, along river, Matto Grosso, Pantanal, Brazil, South America
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The Pantanal Region
The Pantanal is home to 4,700 species of plants and animals and was considered South America's highest concentration of wildlife species, including jaguars and caiman.
A month earlier, in August, video footage was posted on Instagram by Pantanal fishing company Pantanal Pesca, where they wrote in the caption that was translated from Portuguese: 'I think there's a little water in this alligator," laughingly said that they have never seen much of the crocodiles all together.
WWF added that there are approximately 10 million caimans in the Pantanal region. With that many large reptiles located in a single place, it is unsurprising that there are some large concentrations in one region-even if this gathering is particularly large.
Another Instagram footage shows that the animals are not just basking on the beach coast but the bank of a large river, as the camera lens pans around to showcase a bank on the other side as well.
Twitter user @Airetam97 said that "nothing out of the ordinary." He then explained that once the crocs reached a sufficient temperature, they would find shade, dip into the waters, or gape their large mouths to avoid getting much humidity and go about the crocs' daily business.
There is an unclear basis for the allegation of the 'panic amongst the locals.'
Based on the excerpts from the book 'The Pantanal of Brazil, Bolivia and Paraguay' that was published by the Waterland Research Institute in 2000.
The book explained the human population in Pantanal was around 206,600 at that time with a density of about 1.8 people per square kilometer.
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