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A giant crocodile has reunited a grieving Indonesian family with their four-year-old son by bringing him back approximately 1.5km from where the boy was believed to have drowned.

What footage shows

In a video shared on Twitter, which has gone viral on social media, the crocodile can be seen delicately carrying the toddler's body above its head as it swims along the Mahakam River in the province of East Kalimantan.

The giant reptile then drops the boy off beside a rescue boat, where two men retrieve the toddler from the crocodile's back.

After releasing the boy, the crocodile subsequently retreats into the murky depths of the water.

According to Detik News, it is believed that the crocodile carried the toddler's body for approximately 1.5km from where he first drowned.

Strange but true…
A huge crocodile appears with the body of a drowned child on its back & hands it over. The family had failed to find it from a the crocodile infested river in Indonesia.
VC:Gulf Today pic.twitter.com/HDSuKezRSh

— Susanta Nanda (@susantananda3) January 24, 2023

Boy gone missing two days before

According to Newsweek, the boy, Muhammad Ziyad Wijaya, had gone missing two days before near the Jawa Estuary on the east of Borneo in East Kalimantan.

Members from the province's Search and Rescue Agency had been searching for the boy to no avail.

Detik News reported that rescue teams had then received information from the boy's family that they saw a crocodile carrying a human body in the early morning of Jan. 20.

It was later identified to be the missing boy in question.

No bite marks were found on the boy.

“Nothing is missing, everything is intact,” Melkanius Kotta, head of the East Kalimantan Search and Rescue Agency told the Indonesian news agency.

It is believed that the crocodile had actually aided in the search for the deceased toddler.

The cause of the toddler's drowning is not known.

Further background

According to the International Union for the Conservation of Nature, Indonesia is home to at least four different species of crocodile – such as the Saltwater crocodile, the New Guinea freshwater crocodile, the Siamese crocodile, and the Tomistoma.

In 2017, a similar case had happened, where a 40-year-old man had died after he was grabbed and dragged into the water by a crocodile in a river in East Kalimantan.

However, the man's body was later returned to his family, apparently with the help of a crocodile whisperer.

Top images via screenshot of video by Gulf Today