Viral Video Shows Crocodiles “Invading” Brazilian Beach. Here’s The Truth
Posted on September 15, 2022, the clip has amassed over 8 million views with around 1,57,800 likes and over 24,000 retweets and several comments
If you are a social media user, then chances are that you must have come across a video showing numerous crocodiles resting on a Brazilian beach. A video shared by a radio talk show host, Ken Rutkowski on Twitter shows a beach invaded by several hundred large reptiles resting and crawling on the sea shore which has been shot from a safe distance. Some of them are seen in the water as the camera pans.
Along with the short clip, Mr Rutkowski wrote, “In Brazil, an invasion of crocodiles that have flooded one of the beaches with several hundred, even thousands, and the local population is panicking.”
Posted on September 15, the clip has amassed over 8 million views with around 1,57,800 likes and more than 24,000 retweets. The social media users were stunned to see a large number of crocodiles on the beach, with many of them blaming global warming for the ‘invasion’. The large reptiles in the video appear to be stationary, and in fact, few of them are making their way back to the water.
A user commented, “Don’t call it invasion. Call it Reclamation. Thousands of crocodiles have flooded a beach to reclaim their home, once encroached by humans.” Another user wrote, “These are yacare caiman, and like other crocodilians, they’re ectothermic, or “cold-blooded”. To raise their body temperature, they venture onto land, exposing themselves to direct sunlight. Additionally, this isn’t a coastal beach, as shown in longer versions of the video.” “This is not an invasion, locals are not panicking,” the third commented.
The video was originally posted by an Instagram user on August 25 by Pantanal Pesca, an outdoor and sporting goods company in Pantanal, Brazil. “I think there’s a little water in this alligator.’ Lol. I’ve never seen so many together…” when translated from Portuguese. The video further shows that the alligators are not basking on the coastal beach but on a river bank.
According to World Wildlife Fund (WWF), Pantanal is the largest tropical wetland which is located across Bolivia, Brazil, and Paraguay. It has the largest concentration of crocodiles in the world, with approximately 10 million caimans.
The Backstory
According to a report in Newsweek, the details and claims around the video are misleading. It says that the creatures featured in the video are most likely a type of alligator, not a crocodile. The “beach” is in fact a river bank. It further says that alligators are not invading, they are in their own natural habitat.
There is not enough evidence to prove that the alligators are invading, in fact, the region is not even heavily populated, and it is a regular occurrence for the locals, the outlet further said.