High tech drone equipment snapped up by crocodile in Australia

Have a look inside the jaws of a crocodile hungry for media attention

An Australian drone operator hoping to snap some footage of crocodiles instead had his camera kit snapped up by one of his hungry subjects.

Australian Broadcasting Corporation camera operator Dane Hirst was filming at a lagoon in the northern city of Darwin when his tech was trashed by the croc.

"I lined the drone up and moved over the top of him and as I was doing that, I looked up towards the lagoon and saw a crocodile vertical out of the water and heard the great clamping noise of a crocodile's jaws coming together," Mr Hirst said.

The kit was dragged underwater before washing up a couple of weeks later on the banks of the lagoon.

Thankfully he was a safe distance from the crocodile, but was still worried about being snapped at by someone else: "I looked down on my controller and sure enough it was blank screen and no connection. I thought 'oh wow, that was a brand new drone, this is going to be a really hard one to explain to the boss'."