It would be a touch melodramatic to say that onlookers in a remote Thai village were left terrified by the appearance of a weird-looking creature in their midsts. But they’re definitely intrigued and more than a little confused—as we all are—about how this abnormal creation came about.
One glance at the video—taken in High Rock, Wang Hin—shows the bizarre-looking animal to have a deformity of incredibly scaly skin which, when combined with a somewhat elongated snout, gives a distinctly crocodilian appearance to the animal.
Yet according to local website Rath, the creature was born to a buffalo, a mother that had already given birth to a previous litter of perfectly healthy calves.
Of course crocodile-buffalo mating is not only so far-flung a concept that it actually lands itself in the realms of Wonderland-esque fiction, but also the possibility that such an outlandish cross-class pairing would actually result in viable offspring is, strictly speaking, biologically impossible,
So what happened to this poor fella, who apparently died at birth? Was the cause of his disfigurement some major and life-terminating mutation that occurred during gestation? Or are we all being played as victims of an elaborate hoax?
Either way, let’s hope the world doesn’t take the existence of croc-cows too seriously, for now.