March 25, 2026Updated March 26, 2026, 2:28 p.m. ET

A couple on safari in Kruger National Park in South Africa came upon an unusual sighting along the Sabie River: A crocodile dining on sandals.  

Marelize and Antoni shared their video with Latest Sightings, which posted it on Facebook.

Not surprisingly, the commenters had fun with this one. Among the reactions:

“First step in making Crocs.”

“Let’s hope it didn’t eat the human attached to the shoes.”

“Looking at his size, he probably did.”

“Shoes are made from animal hide. It’s that simple. It’s meat.”

“Gotta hide the evidence.”

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Shoes or sandals are not part of a crocodile’s diet, obviously, but they might consume them if they fall into their habitat and are mistaken for food, as what happened at an alligator farm in Florida in 2020.

A 341-pound Nile crocodile named Anuket at the Augustine Alligator Farm Zoological Park fed on a size 6 running shoe that had fallen into its enclosure from a zip-line. It was seen eating the shoe and later regurgitating it, only to eat it again.

University of Florida Veterinary Hospital staff monitored the crocodile and noticed it becoming lethargic and having a loss of appetite. So they sedated the creature, and Dr. Garrett Fraess, who had the longest arms, “gloved up and lubed up and went fishing for the shoe,” as reported by The Gainesville Sun.

But he was unable to reach the shoe, so an operation was performed to cut open Anuket’s stomach to retrieve the shoe. It was reported the crocodile recovered nicely.

As for the crocodile in this video? One can only hope it manages to pass the sandals (or regurgitate them) on its own.

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Aiken Mandlbaur of Latest Sightings told FTW Outdoors that this “is definitely not normal behavior” and he’s never seen anything like it before.

“The Sabie River is a major river, and because it passes through developed areas before entering the park, it is technically possible for non-organic material to wash downstream into Kruger from time to time,” he told FTW Outdoors. “That part we have seen before. For example, one of our Ting Vision cameras once spotted a soccer ball floating down the Crocodile River. The video actually went viral.

“We assume that is probably what happened here as well. What did strike us as especially odd, though, was that there were multiple different shoes. Our best guess is that they may have collected in one spot over time, and the crocodile then came across them. We did not receive any further comment from our supplier.”