Shocked Capybara

Submission 15,652

Part of a series on Capybaras. [View Related Entries]

About

Shocked Capybara is a reaction image based on a screen capture of a South American capybara rodent watching a jaguar hunt a caiman on the nature documentary television series Planet Earth 2.

Origin

On November 20th, 2016, the Jungles episode of Planet Earth 2 was broadcast on the BBC. In the episode, a jaguar is shown carrying a caiman crocodilian by the head, before cutting to a shot of a shocked-looking capybara standing on the river bank (shown below).

That day, Twitter user Danny_McMoomins tweeted that the capybara appeared to be "looking on pure gobsmacked" (shown below).

Spread

Also on November 20th, 2016, Twitter user Michael Kelly tweeted a screen capture of the capybara with the caption "holy shit" (shown below, left).^[4] Within 48 hours, the tweet gained over 1,100 likes and 540 retweets. Shortly after, Twitter user Jodie Eastwood reposted a clip of the scene along with caption "'Mother of god' #capybara" (shown below, right).^[3]

Meanwhile, Redditors Pulsar1977 and wahay636 commented about the capybara's reaction in posts about the episode on the /r/unitedkingdom and /r/television subreddits (shown below).

Also on November 20th, Twitter user Connor McNamara tweeted a picture of the capybara with the caption "OK mate have I just seen that," gathering more than 1,300 likes and 400 retweets in two days (shown below).^[5]

In the coming days, several news sites published articles about the online reaction to the Planet Earth 2 clip, including The Daily Dot,^[6] Mashable,^[7] The Daily Mail^[9] and Someecards.^[8]