A man mauled by a territorial hippo described the encounter as a "bad day at the office".
Paul Templer was working as a tour guide on the Zambezi river in 1996, he would lead tourists down the flowing water past scenery filled with elephants, crocodiles and giraffes.
Also in the nearby menagerie were hippos, known to be territorial and vicious when they have to be and "on a day that started like any other", Paul had a brush with death after an altercation with the huge mammal and became trapped in its mouth.
The father of three had met this particular hippo before, recalling to the Guardian: "The hippo who tried to kill me wasn't a stranger – he and I had met before a number of times.
"I'd been working this stretch of river for years, and the grouchy old two-ton bull had carried out the occasional half-hearted attack. I'd learned to avoid him. Hippos are territorial and I knew where he was most likely to be at any given time."
The guide owned a business that took tourists down the river near the famous Victoria Falls and things appeared to be passing by as normal until he felt a whack and saw the boat of a fellow guide, Evans, being lifted out of the water. Evans himself had been flung out of the boat but the two tourists remained inside.
Paddling over to save Evans, who was later found drowned, Paul's world suddenly went dark.
He recounted: "I reached over to grab his outstretched hand but as our fingers were about to touch, I was engulfed in darkness. There was no transition at all, no sense of approaching danger. It was as if I had suddenly gone blind and deaf."
Bull hippo's can grow over four metres long and in the wild can weigh well over three tonnes.
"There was a terrible, sulphurous smell, like rotten eggs, and a tremendous pressure against my chest. My arms were trapped but I managed to free one hand and felt around – my palm passed through the wiry bristles of the hippo's snout. It was only then that I realised I was underwater, trapped up to my waist in his mouth."
Completely in the grasp of the hippo, Paul was subjected to awful injuries and over 40 puncture wounds, before ending up at the bottom of the river. The one-time guide said he did not know how long the ordeal took.
He added: "Time passes very slowly when you're in a hippo's mouth."
After catastrophic injuries including his lung becoming visible and the loss of his arm, Paul is now a motivational speaker.
