Watch a Group of Massive River Otters Defeat a Crocodile in Vicious Battle

Written by Alan Lemus
Updated: October 24, 2023
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Otters are fluffy and cute and are known for their curiosity and playfulness. Many people don’t realize that river otters are apex predators capable of taking down dangerous animals like crocodiles. A nature enthusiast captured a video of these cute-faced animals battling for hours and eventually taking down a caiman. 

Watch This Incredible Video Of The Mighty River Otters

Watch these river otters take on a fearsome reptilian predator

Fish is their primary diet, but giant otters have a variety of creatures on their menu, including frogs, prawns, and small snakes. The caiman in the video is an adult. But the giant otters risk their lives and go for it because they perceive it as a threat to their young ones. 

Otters’ Attack Strategy 

river otter vs sea otter

Unlike caiman, river otters are capable of sustained energy and use their sharp teeth to injure the reptiles’ soft underbelly

©iStock.com/DanielLacy

The otters know the caiman’s strengths, including their wide mouth filled with sharp teeth, bigger size, and tough armor skin on their back. So they derive a strategy to take it down. 

Their strategy includes launching a coordinated attack while targeting the caiman’s weak points, such as the underbelly and the area behind the neck. The otters dive in turns to put up a coordinated and sustained attack on the caiman’s underbelly. 

The caiman tries to turn upside down to avoid the bites, but this move exposes its soft underbelly to the otters on the surface, which sink their sharp teeth to inflict maximum pain. 

Caimans typically swing their mouths sideways during a fight, and the otters are careful to avoid being within their strike zone.

The primary advantage that otters have over the caiman is sustained energy. The caiman is more powerful, but its explosive energy doesn’t last long. 

The gator’s sideways movement, rolling and thrashing, consumes its energy relatively fast while filling its muscles with lactic acid, eventually killing it.

Thus, the otters don’t kill the caiman directly but trigger a process that wears it down and kills it. The otters in the video sustain the attack for three hours before leaving the reptile for dead. They lose a family member in the fight. They can be seen dragging its body away from the fight scene. 

What Enables Otters to Take Down Much Larger Animals?

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River otters not only live in close family groups, but also have powerful muscles and sharp teeth

©iStock.com/pr2is

Otters live and hunt in tightly-knit family groups led by a breeding couple. The other group members are the pair’s offspring who live with the couple until they’re ready to breed, which occurs at the age of three to five. The group size can vary, but most tend to be ten and below. 

Hunting in numbers allows them to amplify their strength and sustain a fight for more extended periods. 

As with many carnivorous animals, otters have strong jaw muscles and sharp teeth to tear the flesh of their prey. But their canines are shorter than most predators because their primary diet is fish.

Their premolars and molars have an uneven surface to help them grasp slippery prey like frogs, fish, and other slippery aquatic prey.  

The sharp teeth help the otters grasp their prey long enough and drag them to the shore, where they kill and eat them. They also use their sharp teeth to puncture the skin of larger prey, causing them to bleed and weaken, so they can drag them out of the water. 

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It all starts with the elephant seeming to shove the crocodile into the mud. With the position of its head, it may be assumed it’s using its tusks too, to inflict serious damage against the giant reptile. Except that this young elephant doesn’t have any. Not that it lets that get in the way of its quest for vengeance against the croc.

At some point, it takes a refreshing sip: exacting discipline against one’s foes can be thirsty work in the wild. Also seen on the banks of the river are a couple of family members, the wetness of their lower bodies, a clear sign they were wading in the river. Taking the croc’s tail in its mouth, the elephant swings it around. The reptile wriggles helplessly in the water. And one thing’s certain: it will never threaten any pachyderms, again.

Watch this elephant fight this croc and find out just what the outcome was

The photo featured at the top of this post is © L-N/Shutterstock.com


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About the Author

Alan is a freelance writer and an avid traveler. He specializes in travel content. When he visits home he enjoys spending time with his family Rottie, Opie.

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