The man who lent a hand to a crocodile

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As he waved a cheerful salute from his hospital bed yesterday, Chang Po-yu was restricted to using his right arm.

The left had just been re-attached after spending several minutes in a crocodile's mouth.

Mr Po-yu, a 28-year-old vet at a zoo in Taiwan, had the arm severed at the elbow as he tried to treat the fearsome 31-stone, 18ft creature with antibiotics because it had lost its appetite.

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Zookeeper Chang Po-yu waves from his hospital bed as after a seven-hour operation to re-attach his arm

The crocodile sits contentedly with his prize clamped between his jaws

As he reached through iron railings, the 17-year-old Nile crocodile lunged and snapped off his arm at the elbow.

Stunned colleagues applied a tourniquet to the shocked vet as the croc wandered off with the limb in its jaws. A worker fired two bullets at it to kill it so the arm could be retrieved, but he missed.

The sound of the gunfire, however, caused the crocodile to drop its anticipated snack and a courageous official jumped into the pen and retrieved the arm, which was packed in ice.

After a seven-hour reattachment operation, doctors were confident that it would be a success, but warned Mr Po-yu that because they had to remove damaged bone and skin, his arm would be shorter than before.