In an incredible feat, an Indonesian family has been reunited with their dead son after his body was carried to the surface of the Mahakam River by a crocodile.
A viral video shows the deadly reptile carrying the body of the four-year-old boy to a boat of rescuers, who retrieved him from the water and brought him back to his family.
The child, identified as Muhammad Ziyad Wijaya, went missing two days earlier, near the Jawa Estuary on Borneo.
A search was immediately launched.
“Around seven in the morning, the team received information from the family that they saw a crocodile carrying a human body,” head of the East Kalimantan Basarnas Search and Relief Office, Melkianus Kotta, told detik.com, a local news outlet.
“It turned out that the body was the child we were looking for.”
The crocodile apparently took the body in its mouth to the surface of the water, about 1.6km away from where the boy is thought to have drowned.
It reportedly carried the body on its back to the rescue boat, and then retreated into the water.
Incredibly, no bite marks were found on the boy’s body.
“Nothing is missing; everything is intact,” Kotta said, crediting the crocodile for having helped the search for the missing child.
Indonesia is home to at least four different crocodilian species: the Saltwater crocodile, the largest and fastest of all the crocodile species; the New Guinea freshwater crocodile; the Siamese crocodile; and the Tomistoma croc.