Elephant scuffles with hippos in Kruger’s Shingwedzi River

Posted by Anita Froneman on 25 May 2021

Visitors to the Shingwedzi River in Kruger National Park recently sighted an incredible encounter between a clearly upset elephant and a bloat of hippos. To complicate matters, a very young hippo calf gets caught up in the thick of the commotion, and nearly gets trampled.

The encounter was captured by Gordon Crundwell, who told Latest Sightings: ‘We stopped at the viewpoint and noticed that the pool was full of hippos – over 25 of them… We watched an elephant come down to drink in the pool, but he seemed to get upset with the hippos and got into the water and started chasing them.

‘The elephant was getting more agitated and started thrashing and trumpeting, causing chaos in the pool. The elephant started chasing all the hippos out of the pool. During the commotion, a baby hippo was left alone on the sandbank. The elephant walked towards the baby and started pushing it around with his trunk, he then threw the baby in the air further up the sandbank!’ he continued. 

‘While the elephant was getting out of the water the baby hippo was nipping at his rear foot – this seemed to further agitate the elephant who then tried to kick the baby hippo away. The baby hippo continued to follow the elephant out of the water where a rock blocked what appeared to be another angry attack on the baby hippo – the elephant lost interest quite quickly and walked away.

‘In over 50 years of visiting game parks, I have never seen an elephant and hippo interaction like this! If you see something different going on, keep the camera rolling as you never know what you might capture!’ Crundwell concluded. 

Take a look:

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Picture: Screenshot from YouTube.






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