Just last week a naked sunbather in Berlin chased a wild boar that had stolen his bag with his laptop inside.

Now footage has emerged of a wild boar swimming in the Baltic Sea and arriving at a beach in Schönagen, Schleswig-Holstein, that was full of sunseekers.

“Something's going on at the Baltic Sea beach,” wrote the seaside resort Seebad Warnemünde in a post on Facebook.

As the extraordinary video shows, the animal swam into the bay and onto the beach. A man can be seen using a shovel to shoo the animal away.

The incident, which took place at the coast in Germany's northernmost state, happened at the weekend.

“At first we thought it was a dog,” German Life Saving Association (DLRG) watchdog leader Marcus Brandl told Bild newspaper. Brandl first spotted the animal swimming with binoculars.

“I immediately rounded up all DLRG forces on the beach,” he said. “Then we pulled the guests out of the water and brought the children to safety.”

The wild boar was seen headed towards a swimmer who was still in the water, Brand said. “But then it turned around.”

Wild boar had a long swimming trip

Apparently the animal had swum for miles before. A sailor reported that he first thought the animal was a porpoise. “But it didn't dive,” Claus Schlüter from Cuxhaven (Lower Saxony) said on social media where he had uploaded a video of the swimming pig.

“We couldn't save it, but at least we could get it to change course towards Schönhagen,” he continued. “The boar was really fast,” Schlüter told broadcaster NDR.

On Saturday afternoon, the animal finally landed on the busy beach at Schönhagen. It stormed through the middle of the beach, “zigzagging over bathing towels and past beach chairs” and disappeared towards the steep coast.

Good swimmers

Wild boars are considered to be good swimmers. Even though they are peaceful animals,  they can be dangerous to humans if they are distressed.

The wild boar could have been startled by harvesting work and fled into the water in panic and then was driven by the current towards the beach of Schönhagen, Otto Nagel, a local farmer, told Bild.

Luckily there were no injuries in the incident.

Last week a wild boar caused a stir when it stole a bag belonging to a man sunbathing naked at Berlin's Teufelssee. The man chased the animal until it dropped the bag.