Crocodiles are supposed to eat hippos, buffaloes and everything else that gets within range of their massive mouths, right? That’s why two recent stories about what appear to be a half-crocodile-half-hippo and a half-crocodile-half-buffalo have crocodile fans wondering if they’re half crocked themselves. Are crocodiles becoming lovers, not fighters?

A Scottish tourist named Harvey Robertson was on vacation recently on the west coast of Greece south of Albania. While on a boat in a sea cave, he was taking pictures of the water and noticed later that one of the photos showed a creature stranger than his homeland’s’ famous Loch Ness monster. Harvey and most who view the photo say it looks like a half-crocodile-half-hippo with a little dolphin thrown in. What is it?

The Egyptian demon Ammit

If this combination sounds familiar, it’s close to the form of Ammit, the female demon in Egyptian mythology with the head of a crocodile and body of a hippo and a lion. No wonder she was known as the Devourer of the Dead and the Eater of Hearts. A more famous crocodile hybrid is Sobek, the Egyptian deity depicted as a human with a crocodile head and known as the god of fertility – which might explain all of these Egyptian crocodile hybrids.

A half-crocodile-half-buffalo?

However, it doesn’t explain the half-crocodile-half-buffalo found earlier this month in High Rock, Thailand. This creature also had a crocodile head and scaly skin covering the buffalo half as well. Local villagers put the creature on display as a way to bring them good luck. They may think it resembles the Hindu god Makara, which sometimes is depicted as a half-mammal-half-crocodile, or the Nuga, a half-human-half-crocodile creature that some Papua New Guineans believe they descended from.

Taking a closer look, the creature in Thailand may be a calf born with a severe skin disorder while the one in Greece could be a deformed dolphin or whale. Those are obviously the theories of people who already have good luck or don’t need to scare away the dead.