Doc film about the friendship of a man and a crocodile. And crocodiles know how to love! Friendship between a crocodile and a human. The Man Who Became a Crocodile's Best Friend

One of the smallest countries in Central America, Costa Rica, has lost its pet, a crocodile named Pocho. The 450-kilogram reptile died of natural causes.

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According to ITAR-TASS, The 50-year-old predator has become a national attraction with weekly performances. with the participation of its owner, Gilberto Schidan. He, without possessing the skills of a trainer, was able to raise a formidable reptile, like a dog.

The crocodile walked and swam at his heels, on command he raised his tail and head out of the water, turned over and even blinked. In addition, he kindly allowed his owner, who, by the way, is four years older than him, to look into his huge mouth.

17 years ago, Shidan discovered a five-meter crocodile on the banks of the Parismina River in the province of Limón. The animal was near death - a poacher's bullet wounded it in the left eye. Gilberto and seven friends dragged Pocho into a boat and took him to their village, where he recovered after a few weeks.

During rehabilitation, Shidan did not leave the crocodile for a minute, and at night he even slept next to him. Later, the Ministry of Environment, Energy and Communications of Costa Rica issued Shidan permission to keep an unusual pet, provided that he would be well looked after.

Pocho was placed in an artificial pond with an area of ​​100 square meters, assigning a veterinarian and a biologist to it. The animal was put on a diet - the crocodile ate about 14 kilograms of fish and chicken per week.

Gilberto and Pocho became stars of the Internet, and then of television on many channels around the world. Shidan admitted that he never sought fame, but simply wanted to have a true friend. “I wanted him to feel that someone cares, that not all people are bad,” he said.

The unusual friendship of a fisherman and naturalist from Costa Rica named Gilberto Shedden and his best friend the crocodile Pocho, more than 5 meters long and weighing up to half a ton.

Also known as "Chito" (Crocodile Man), he first encountered a crocodile on the banks of the Parismina River in Central America in 1991, while the animal lay suffering from a gunshot wound.

The wounded crocodile was taken to Sikirs with the help of Chito and his friend, where a fisherman cared for it for six months. He fed the crocodile chicken, fish and gave him some medicines to make the crocodile recover.

He went beyond simply grooming the crocodile, he even simulated chewing himself to entice the crocodile to eat.

Chito kissed and stroked the crocodile and even slept next to the animal, not at all afraid of it.

“There wasn't enough food. The crocodile needed my care to restore its strength to life,” Shedden said.

He also hid Pocho in a hidden location in a pond under trees in a nearby forest until Costa Rican authorities gave him official permission to care for the crocodile. The injured crocodile soon returned to his healthy state and Chito released him into a nearby river.

However, the next morning he was stunned to see a crocodile sleeping outside the door of his house. The crocodile came back to his savior.

It seems that Chito's tender loving care made the crocodile stay close to his savior. Eventually, Pocho became a member of Scheden's family, who lived with his second wife and daughter. His first wife left him while he was treating a crocodile and spending a lot of time with it.

It is believed that friendship between predatory animals and people is practically impossible, and often even an ordinary meeting in the wild can end sadly.

I bring to your attention several incredible true stories that prove the opposite...

1. Friendship between the crocodile Pocho and a human

Crocodiles are not exactly cute and fluffy, but there are still pleasant exceptions.

Almost 20 years ago, a fisherman named Chito noticed a 5-meter seriously wounded crocodile in the bushes (he was shot by a farmer). The fisherman could not pass by, leaving the animal to die, and decided to help him - he brought him home and took care of him. The crocodile was named Pocho.

"I just wanted him to feel loved and to understand that not all people are bad," Chito told the Times. "I love all animals, especially those that need help."

When the crocodile gained strength, Chito decided to free him and took him to the lake to set him free. But Pocho returned back to his savior. With the permission of the Minister of the Environment, he took care of his new friend for almost two decades. He was placed in an artificial pond, with a biologist and a veterinarian assigned to him.

Over time, the crocodile and the man began to trust each other so much that they spent time in the water playing games for several hours a day.

It is noteworthy that Pocho was gentle and patient with his human companion and even responded to his name when called.

Thousands of tourists, scientists and animal behaviorists came to see Chito and Pocho's friendship.

In 2011, after many years of friendship, Pocho died of natural causes at the age of 50. Hundreds of people attended his funeral.

Naturally, Chito was devastated by the death of his friend Pocho, but continues to this day to share his story to raise awareness of how kind and unique crocodiles can be.

2. Friendship between a man and a polar bear

Mark Abbot Dumas is the only person in the world who has very close contact with a polar bear. They have been friends for 16 years, swim in the pool together, wrestle, lie in the grass and just fool around on the lawn.

Mark is a professional trainer and met Agee when she was just eight weeks old. One day, while searching for a bear cub for an upcoming film about Alaska, he learned that a zoo in Sweden had an extra polar bear cub. He made a lot of efforts to pick him up from the zoo, went through several authorities and proved that he could properly care for and maintain the animal.

After permission was received, Agee went with Mark to his home in Canada. She lived in Mark and his wife's house for the first few weeks, and then as she grew a little older and stronger, she moved into her own spacious enclosure, next to Mark's house.

Now 16-year-old bear Agee is a local heroine - a star in newspapers and television. She has an excellent appetite, eating salmon, chicken and other various types of meat.

3. Unusual Trinity

In the American state of Georgia, in the animal rehabilitation center Noah's Ark in the small town of Locust Grove, an unusual trinity lives: a lion named Leo, a Bengal tiger Shere Kahn and an American black bear Baloo ( Baloo).

The animals have been with each other since childhood - 12 years ago they were confiscated from local drug lords and brought to this center.

Since then they have lived together, hugging, playing ball, chasing each other - in general, they are strong friends.

And recently, three friends were moved to a new spacious enclosure with an artificial lake and a large wooden house.

Such friendship among such wild animals is very unusual, because black bears and tigers are considered loners in adulthood.

Many people consider crocodiles to be cold-blooded predators who are guided only by instincts. But in this situation, all these ideas are far from the truth. Now you will see for yourself when you learn this story of a crocodile and a man. This will change your usual understanding of crocodiles and wildlife in general.

Fisherman Chito and crocodile Pocho

Like many other real or fictional stories of friendship between man and animal, this story begins with a rescue back in 1989.

A young and then unnamed crocodile was shot by an unknown shepherd, after which the reptile, on the verge of life and death, was discovered near his home in the city of Siquirres (Costa Rica) by an ordinary Costa Rican fisherman named Gilberto Shedon. He pulled him ashore and hid him in a barn, and initially the 34-year-old man’s intentions were not at all altruistic: he was going to remove the crocodile’s precious skin after it died from its wounds.

But the crocodile desperately fought for life, stubbornly refusing to go to another world. The fisherman felt pity for the poor creature, and he began to gradually nurse the crocodile, feed it chicken, hiding it from his family. The fisherman devoted so much time to the crocodile that his wife left him, considering such an attitude towards the reptile crazy. As soon as Pocho - that’s what the crocodile was called - returned to normal, Gilberto released him back into the river and returned home. In the morning he found Pocho sleeping peacefully on his veranda. The crocodile refused to return to the wild, returned after its new owner and remained to live with him forever.

“When Pocho is anxious about something, his eyes blink quickly, and when he is happy, he blinks less often. You can tell a lot from the eyes,” says Chito.

The cognitive abilities of a prehistoric reptile and an ideal murder weapon are generally considered, to put it mildly, low. Not to mention the emotional ones. But, after leaving the crocodile, Gilberto, nicknamed Chito, began to swim without any fear with the monstrous toothy creature in the local river. Moreover, someone else could approach the reptile at a more or less close distance only under the supervision of the owner, when he was between the stranger and his pet.

Today, it’s easy to see a trainer fearlessly sticking his head into a crocodile’s mouth in any tropical country. But in these cases, a tricky trick is played out in front of the audience: before the performance, the crocodiles are fed to their fullest, and the enclosure is maintained at a low temperature, at which the reptile is in suspended animation and, in principle, is not capable of any active actions. At the joint performances of Chito and the five-meter predator, everything was different. This is the only case when a person managed to tame a crocodile and enter into some special, almost mystical, trusting relationship with it.

Chito and Pocho's amazing relationship allowed them to perform in natural conditions. Performances simply became a necessity for them. Firstly, they made it possible to feed such a voracious domestic animal as a crocodile, and secondly, it was under these conditions that the Costa Rican authorities allowed Gilberto to keep the predator and even provided the services of a veterinarian. But, of course, the friendship between man and animal went much deeper than the superficial and, perhaps, somewhat vulgar spectacle of their joint swims for spectators.

“We have been with him for more than twenty years. We, of course, had problems in the first two or three years after we met. But I’m sure that Pocho will never harm me,” says Chito.

For more than twenty years, Pocho lived with Gilberto's family - he found a new wife, who gave birth to his daughter. The resourceful fisherman performed with the crocodile in a local reserve for almost ten years to surprised tourists, and the legends of “Pocho and Chito” spread throughout the world.

The past tense in the article is not just a few years ago, Pocho died of natural causes at the age of 55. But the story of his friendship with a man nicknamed Chito is still alive. And these are not just nice words. Tourists, touched by this amazing story of a unique and one-of-a-kind relationship, still come specifically to Costa Rica, look for Gilberto's house in Parismina and spend hours listening to Chito's stories about an incredible friendship spanning two decades.

Shortly before Pocho's natural death, a documentary was made about him and his owner, which claimed that the crocodile's abnormal behavior was most likely caused by brain damage due to a wound in 1989.

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In 1991, a large sharp-nosed crocodile more than five meters long lived on the banks of the Reventazon River in Costa Rica and liked to visit a nearby farm to eat birds and cows. In the end, during another visit to the farm, the crocodile caught the eye of the owner, who shot him in the head with a gun. The reptile, with its last strength, crawled to the river bank and remained there to die...

At this time, a local fisherman named Gilbert Shedden was walking along the shore. Seeing the helpless crocodile, Gilbert decided to take it home and cure it.

For six months, the fisherman fed Pocho (that's what Gilbert called the crocodile) fish and bandaged his wound. Eventually, the crocodile recovered, and then Gilbert decided to take it back to the river so that the animal could live free in its natural habitat. Having released Pocho, the fisherman returned home and fell asleep, but the next morning, when he opened the door, he found Pocho standing at the entrance.

At a family council, where Gilbert, his wife and daughter were present, it was decided to leave the crocodile at home, but to place it not in a room, but in a pond in the backyard.

Over time, the friendship between Pocho and Gilbert became so strong that the man began to swim with a huge crocodile in the pond. Throughout all this time, Pocho has never shown aggression towards his savior, although crocodiles are considered dangerous predators that cannot be tamed. The unusual friendship between man and crocodile aroused the interest of hundreds of people who came specially to watch Pocho and Gilbert spend time together.

Pocho died of old age in 2011, having lived a full and happy crocodile life. Now Gilbert Shedden has got himself a new crocodile, and he has already managed to make some progress in his friendship with the reptile.

To this day, many people wonder what caused the unusual friendship between the deadly sharp-nosed crocodile and the fisherman. Some say that the crocodile stopped being aggressive due to a head injury caused by a gunshot, while others believe that the reason for the friendship was the care and kindness that Gilbert showed towards Pocho. What do you think?

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