Watch the Heart-Warming Moment When Heroes Save Baby Turtles from Hungry Crocodiles

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There’s never a dull moment at the Zoological Wildlife Foundation (ZWF) in Miami, as Jacob Feder’s YouTube channel frequently shows. In this video, a chimpanzee stumbles upon a tiny yellow-bellied slider turtle in a puddle of water near the crocodile habitat. Upon closer inspection, the ZWF team discovers several hatchling turtles hiding directly inside the croc’s pen! Thanks to the teams’ quick intervention — including rescuing a hatchling from inside a crocodile’s throat — these tiny baby turtles lived to see another day.

When Turtles and Crocodiles Live Together

Crocodiles are predatory, and they’re not usually too picky about what they eat. In the wild, pretty much any type of turtle could be on the menu. So, how is it that these adult yellow-bellied slider turtles are able to share the same space with a bunch of crocodiles? It all comes down to size. The crocodiles in this video are still young and relatively small, making the adult turtles much too big for them to eat. If these were fully grown crocodiles, however, it would be a very different story. Although not their number one choice of meal, an adult crocodile could easily crunch right through a turtle’s shell with its powerful bite.

Although the adult sliders are safe, their hatchlings are only about an inch long, making them a perfect bite-sized snack for the young crocodiles. That’s why the men in the video work so quickly to rescue the baby turtles from the croc pen.

Would These Baby Turtles Have Survived in the Wild?

Female yellow-bellied sliders lay anywhere from two to 20 eggs. They bury the eggs in sandy soil, which is where their parental duties end. For the next three months, the eggs incubate in the buried nest without any supervision or care from mom or dad. Once the turtles hatch, they’re entirely independent and must fend for themselves. In the video, the men could easily remove the hatchlings from the croc’s pen and separate the babies from their parents since the tiny turtles are already designed to live on their own.

Baby yellow-bellied sliders grow several inches each year, but they don’t reach sexual maturity for a bit. Males typically mature around two to five years old, while females reach maturity when they are five to eight years old.

If the men in the video hadn’t stepped in to rescue the tiny hatchlings, the crocodiles would have undoubtedly eaten them all eventually, as yellow-bellied slider parents don’t protect their young. In the wild, only a lucky few would likely survive to adulthood.