Here’s why Steve Irwin never wrangled a hippo

Vintage footage of the Steve Irwin resurfaced online overnight thanks to the reddit thread, "What do you *NEVER* f**k with".

And, believe it or not, though he was one of the toughest men around, there was one animal even the crocodile hunter refused to go near: a hippopotamus.

And from the clip above, you can see why.

Many years ago Steve was exploring Zambia and visited the Luangwa River which was home to some “really angry hippos”.

“By crikey, do they get grumpy,” he said about the animals. “They pushed me right out of the river.”

In the video, the croc hunter can be seen canoeing around the hippo group, keeping a clear distance.

But the hippopotamus is known to be a very territorial animal and when the male bull of the pack spots Steve, the animal becomes extremely aggressive towards him.

A clearly worried Steve then says: “Hey, I don’t want anything to do with this guys.”

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For someone who used to jokingly dangle his kids in front of crocs, Steve reportedly said that canoeing across that particular river with all the hippopotamus’ was the single most dangerous thing he had done in his career.

That’s definitely saying something.

Lesson learned: if Steve Irwin won’t mess with hippos, we all definitely need to steer well clear of them!

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