When Hippos Attack (Full Episode) | Dangerous Encounters | Nat Geo Wild

The African hippo took three tons of raw charging power. Capturing this beast is the ultimate challenge. But Brady Barr's trying a new strategy. Now, this sounds dangerous. One that could help wildlife experts catch and relocate this massive animal. Safety's off. One, two, three. He'll bring it down with a net. Got it! Woo! He'll test the system on Florida gators and African warthogs. He's got one tusk in him. Working up to the big moment. Come quicker, Harry. Quicker, quicker, quicker. Oh, he's coming up. He's coming up. Go, go, go. Getting his hands on a hippo. Biologist Brady Barr has a history with hippos. Go, go, go. Man, my heart just stopped. More than once, he's tried to get up close and personal with this massive beast. This leg is stuck. Careful, careful. And had to beat a retreat. There he goes. And he's not alone. In Africa, the hippo's said to be responsible for more deaths than any other mammal on the continent. The only way for scientists to get close is to use a powerful sedative. But dart a hippo, and the danger is he'll retreat to water and drown. So Brady's on a mission. He wants to catch a hippo using a net. Either net launchers or net guns. You're going to be able to subdue the animal quickly, incapacitate it before it gets to the water, and safely be able to capture it. Brady's starting his quest not in Africa, but here in southern Florida. Because before he goes another round with a hippo, he wants to test the idea on a familiar adversary. Oh, there's a gator right there. See it? The gator. Like the hippo, the alligator is semi-aquatic and has a similar flight response. It escapes into water. So this experiment will give Brady a chance to see how a large animal responds to being netted on land. Yeah, here's some water up here. He's brought in the A team. Let's see if we see anything here. So this would be a great place for a net launcher. Brian, we could put one here, right? Net man Brian Pedrosian. We could put one here, maybe two here. If you put it right on the edge of the water. How big is the match? And gator trapper Lee Lightsey. Brady's idea is to plant a remotely fired device that will shoot a net over the gators while they're out on land. You can't see them now because it's high noon and it's hot. But later this afternoon and tomorrow morning, these things are all going to be out basking in the sun to try to raise their body temperature. Because it gets cool at night. Too cold for gators. He wants to set traps in a couple of different locations. So Lee heads out to find basking spots. While Brady test fires the weapon of choice, a net launcher. Brian, maybe you can remind me. Let's go over how the net launcher works again, just so I'm sure what's going to happen. We use a remote control to fire the net. How far away can we be? So about a half mile to a mile. That's great. This is the launcher unit. This is the projectile that's going to fly out of the launcher. There's three of them that are attached to the front of the net. These will all fire simultaneously with these 22 blanks. So it's the explosion. The powder explosion propels our weights up into the air and the net is attached to the weights. Exactly. So here's the trigger mechanism. It'll fire and release all these simultaneously to hit the firing pins. And you take a couple of the blanks here. And one blank goes in each one of these units. These are 22 blanks. There's no bullet. It's just a powder charge. So there will be a little pop. When they hear that pop, they're going to go for the water. So we're going to have to find out if the net's quicker than the gators. Exactly. All right, we got it all loaded up. I'm going to take the safety off and we'll just get out of range and remotely fire it. OK. Great. Just hold this down. And then when you're ready, just flip that switch and it'll go. OK. Let's do it. One, two, three. Whoa. Wow, that looks great. The net launcher is ready to go. And Lee's found gators. These animals are concentrated in these little pockets and pools of water. I mean, look, look, look. There's one right here. Look, look, look, right here. See him? See him in the middle there? I mean, this is a perfect basking site. I think we ought to put it right here. Mm-hmm. And then when these gators come out and bask. We'll set the gunner somewhere over here. Yeah, right over here, right over here. And we'll shoot it from water back over to land. Because, I mean, you can see the tail drags. I mean, they're basking way up here, like 15 feet from the water. This is a perfect spot for them. Put that thing down and let's get out of here. They'll leave the net launcher overnight so the gators get used to it. Then when they come out for their morning bask, the crew will return and trigger the trap. Brady, this idea you've got, this is going to be off the chain. I mean, to catch four or five gators, you know, one gator a lot of times whoops you. Sometimes you have to call me. I've came in before, and you've been in distress and helped you. So we're going to put five alligators in a net. Well, that's where you're wrong. I'm hoping for 14 or 15 alligators in a net. I want the mother load. I think it's going to work. You wait and see. We're going to have them. We may not catch them all, but I think they'll all be under the net. It's going to be mass hysteria trying to grab these snapping gators and get them secured. I mean, this may be a crazy idea. I got a feeling all we're going to do is tear stuff up. We've done that before, and we're good at that. Let's get out of here. We don't want to disturb these animals. Lee may be skeptical, but if it works on gators, net technology could ultimately be the key to safely capturing hippos. In this day and age, in terms of big game capture, it's pretty much been figured out. You can drug the animal, just dart it, walk right up to it, whether it's a lion or a buffalo. But there are a couple animals which are still problems, these semi-aquatic beasts, like the hippopotamus. Because if you do dart them, they run into the water and drown, and you lose them. So I really think this might work to capture them before they get to the water. And I'm really excited to try these new techniques out, because this really is the last frontier. What happens if you shoot a hippo with a net and I'm not there with you? Well, then we'll catch it twice as fast. Brady wants to set the second trap in a location with bigger gators. And Lee's got just the place. Oh, there's a gator right there, see it? Yeah, he's a big one. Yeah, this is exactly what I'm talking about. See that big one with the stuff on his back? This is where the big boys hang out. You couldn't ask for a better basking site. Look, these are marks of all giant gators that have come up here and laid in the sun. Check, oh my gosh, check this out. This is a back foot. There's the back of the foot. There's the tip of the toe. That thing is three of my hands long. So I think we fire one net this way, but then we have the other one fire it over this way so we have an overlap. Two nets on the one gator? Yes. Brady wants to see how a gator will respond to being netted, whether it will trigger aggression, fear, or flight. More than likely, he's just gonna lunge in the water with a net. All we can hope for is to get just tangled up in it. Look, that net's not gonna stop him. But what I'm hoping is it's gonna slow him down long enough for us to come in and get a rope around his neck or get him by the tail. Brady, how come I got stuck carrying all the heavy stuff? I'm carrying the delicate gear. It's getting dark. The team needs to rig this site and leave. We don't want to be here after dark with these gators. This is ground zero right here. If they're here, they're ours. Both nets, boom, boom. It's morning in the Florida swamp. Time to net a gator. The sun's up. The sun just peaked over the horizon. Those gators are cold. It was a long, cold night here in southern Florida. They're crawling out. They want to warm themselves in the sun. We need to make sure that there's a gator in the proper spot in our strike zone. You want to go take a peek? He's got his ears. Well, ease up, ease up, fella. If everything goes to plan, they'll have a monster gator just waiting to be netted. But nothing ever does. They need to warm up. They want to come out. They definitely want to come out. One gator comes out onto land. One's coming out. See the eyes? Here he comes. See him? He's coming. Yeah. He's coming. Oh, there he goes. But something spooks it. I think they see them boxes. I think they do, too. See that shiny stuff? I think they do, too. They don't get that big by being stupid. If these gators aren't falling for it, what are the chances it'll work on a hippo? But they're not done yet. Before it gets too hot, the team needs to check the second trap. And as soon as they hit the spot, they see they've struck gold. We're going to get them all. Don't you worry about that. They're in our target area. I think we'll get all of them if they stay there. Don't get bitten. Do not get bitten. Let us off until you guys do. Yeah, yeah, yeah. OK, ready? 3, 2, 1, go, go. The nets worked. Watch it. We got them all. We got them all, man. I told you it would work. Look, I don't even think. Maybe he doesn't know he's been captured. We need to help. That thing almost got me on the whole thing. And an unexpected twist. Instead of trying to flee into the water, the gators seem stunned. They're not acting like they're not going too far. Well, you know, it's a cool day, which is in our favor. They did not want to go into the water. They want to stay out here in the sun and thermoregulate. I think they're entangled. I don't think they can get away. I don't think they can either. Man, look at that. I thought it'd take us all day. And I thought they'd tear the net up. And you tell me if that one's coming. He's coming. Coming my way. Watch him. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Well, these gators are about six or seven feet long. But if these things got a hold of you, man, you would not get it off your arm. Look at that. It just wants you to put something in there. Watch that one over there. Whoa. The gators respond to the humans, but not the net itself. Can you grab him by the tail? Oh, he's watching you. I know. He wants you bad. He knows you're the Brady Barter, the crocodilian catcher. This is the result Brady was hoping for. A simple net has immobilized the gators on land, making capture less dangerous for both man and animal. That's great. Success. Man, that's fun. First time that's ever been done. We just made history in the croc catching world. Caught multiple gators with a net launcher. That is awesome. Whoa. Brady's demonstrated you can catch a gator with a net. But now, he's got to apply this technique to a hippo, a massive, aggressive beast that moves fast on land. If Brady wants to net a hippo, he'll have to learn to run and gun. Hippos were once widespread throughout sub-Saharan Africa. But decades of habitat loss and poaching have wiped out healthy populations in key areas. Brady's traveling to Lawande National Park in Malawi to team up with two experts in the field of transporting big game, Dr. Andre Ice and Kester Vickery. There's some more crocs there. There's a bunch of crocs there on the left. Their mission, relocate hippos into areas where they've been hunted out of existence. But first, they have to catch them. And a net could be the answer. But instead of a launcher, I'll show you on the net gun. Here's the net gun. They'll use a gun. Wow, that's heavy. Yeah, it's really heavy. So you open the chamber, stick a blank charge. It fires exactly like a rifle, except it hasn't got a bullet. But the pressure that's used to normally push a bullet through the barrel is forced out of the chamber and into these four barrels. So a weight goes in each one of these barrels. The explosion, the force of the explosion goes up the barrel, propelling the weight out like bullets. And since these are various angles, that's what opens the net. And it opens and deploys the net as it opens up. The reason the team needs to use a gun is that they can't just walk up to a two-ton hippo. They'll have to deploy the net from a helicopter. So this is the bucket. This is what goes. It's a fiberglass bucket. Obviously, weight is a problem. So it's fiberglass for a reason, but it's got to be quite robust. So imagine packing the net. It's probably like packing a parachute. It's the key to the whole operation. Absolutely, you can't wind it up. It's got to be flat. So you just kind of fold it over itself. And then at the end, you'll have to pull it out. It takes an expert to shoot a moving hippo out of a chopper. So the team decides to try out the device on a smaller animal, the warthog. First, a little target practice. OK, now it's good to go. Yeah, it's good to go. Safety's off. OK, we're going to say that that stick, and I've placed a small camera on the ground, that's going to be the warthog. I'm going to approach it like this, and then it's like this, right? Yes, absolutely. And fire it when I come up with my hand. Yes. All right, you guys got me nervous on this. And it's going to kick a lot, right? It's going to kick quite a bit. OK, I'm going to try it. Count of three. It kicks like a horse. Oh my gosh. One, two, three. Good one. Kind of overshot it. No, that was actually good. That's right. When the warthog hears the noise, it's going to instinctively run away and run into my net. Absolutely, so you want to try and be up and over the pig. What do you think of that kick? Yeah, it kicks. It kicks like a mule. That's all right. Yeah, I can do that. All right, let's reload.