Man ‘disembowelled by a hippo on his honeymoon’

Detailed summary

A hippopotamus bit into the man’s lower body and took him underwater in Botswana (file image) (Picture: Getty Images) A newlywed man was left with his intestines hanging out of…

A newlywed man was left with his intestines hanging out of his body in a grisly hippo attack.

Samuel McKee is one of the few people who have survived a close encounter with a hippopotamus, one of the deadliest animals in the world.

His honeymoon in Botswana with his high school sweetheart Anna McKee became a fight for survival when a hippo latched onto Samuel and pulled him into the water.

The couple, from Washington state, had travelled to explore the Okavango Delta, an inland river area teeming with African wildlife.

A guide was navigating them in a dugout canoe through the river when the attack unfolded, with Samuel rescued thanks to his wife’s actions.

The guide had pointed at a mother hippo with two calves in the distance, saying that the animal’s open mouth was a sign of aggression and that they would avoid the spot.

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Samuel, 31, told Newsweek: ‘Then the hippo hit. It grabbed me around the torso and pinned me to the bottom of the swamp. I wasn’t really feeling pain yet. What I remember most was the force. It was more force than I’d ever experienced in my life.

‘For a moment I felt its grip loosen, then it clamped down again lower on my body. A few seconds later it was gone.’

Opening of the article, excerpted from Metro. To read the rest, open the article on the publisher's site.