Paul Iga was playing near the shores of Lake Edward when a hippopotamus attacked him. The two-year-old boy miraculously survived the animal that partially swallowed him and then regurgitated him. The incredible story happened in Uganda.
According to a reconstruction, the child was playing near his home, about 800 meters from the shores of the lake, in the western part of the country when the hippopotamus grabbed him in its huge jaws, up to half of the body: it “grabbed the child by the head and swallowed half of his body,” a Ugandan police statement read. Version with which the wildlife authority does not agree, which told the BBC the child would have been attacked rather than swallowed.
Luckily a local man, Chrispas Bagonza, saw what happened and started hitting him with stones. At that point the hippopotamus spat out the baby and walked away towards the lake. Little Paul was rushed to a clinic for his injuries and then transferred to a hospital in Bwera, near the border with the Democratic Republic of Congo. As a precaution, he was given a rabies vaccine, so he was discharged.
“It is the first incident of its kind in which a hippopotamus has wandered away from the lake and attacked a child,” Ugandan police added in a statement. But the animals – which can weigh up to 1.5 tonnes (1,500 kilograms) – are estimated to kill around 500 people a year in Africa. And officials warned locals that the animals may “see humans as a threat” and said “any interaction can cause them to act strangely or aggressively.” Hippos are the third largest living land mammal and their teeth can reach up to 50.8 centimeters in length. Despite their size, they can also reach speeds of up to 32 kilometers per hour.
