Zimbabwean bride Zanele Ndlovu, 25, married fiance Englishman Jamie Fox, 27, in a chapel at the Mater Dei Hospital in Bulawayo, five days after being attacked by a Nile Crocodile, Crocodylus niloticus, while the couple were canoeing on the Zambezi River. The 5 m animal leaped onto the boat unexpectedly from clear water, seizing Ms Ndlovu by the arm and rolling, a method which uses the Crocodile's mass to inflict maximum damage on it's prey. The couple were hauled from the water by employees of the boating company and airlifted to hospital, but the arm could not be saved.
Zanele Ndlovu, at her wedding on 5 May 2018, five days after losing an arm in a Crocodile attack. AP.
The Zambezi is home to a large population of Nile Crocodiles, Crocodylus niloticus, which are popular with tourists. Nile Crocodiles are large animals, reaching about five meters in length, and are ambush predators capable of taking large prey, including, on occasion, Humans. The animals are thought to be at their most dangerous around September on the Zambezi, when the water is lowest, and females are guarding eggs buried in nests by the river, however they can clearly be dangerous at other times of year if provoked.
Nile Crocodiles are considered to be of Least Concern under the terms of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature’s Red List of Threatened Species,
but are still protected in many countries, due to
historic hunting which decimated populations in many areas. However, the
rising number of attacks on Humans by the animals has led to calls for
regulated hunting to be introduced to control the population.
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