Watch the intense moment a powerful elephant turns on a rhino and her baby that are taking up space at the local waterhole.
This was filmed by Krishna Tummalapalli, the 64-year-old Interventional Cardiologist from India. Upon his family visit to the Kruger National Park, he captured an amazing video of an elephant and rhino interacting on a crazy level!
We asked Krishna to explain to LatestSightings.com what exactly happened, and he told us the following story:
“We were on a family trip to South Africa in early June 2019. We had been hoping to visit Africa for quite some time and needless to say, it didn’t disappoint! We went to the Kruger National Park and on our second day of safari – around 5 in the afternoon – at Shishangeni Lodge, I managed to take this video near the watering hole.”
“Even without this incredible sighting, it was shaping out to be a very good Safari. We saw lots of Zebra herds and took a cute video of a rhino taking a mud bath. There were lots to see even before we got to witness what was probably the most intense occurrence. We went to the watering hole and were watching two rhinos drinking water for a bit of time before we spotted two elephants approaching from the distance. We were curious about what was about to happen but we never expected them to get into a fight.”
“We were amazed that we could see something like the elephant become aggressive towards the rhinos. We were also worried for the baby rhino, especially after the elephant pushed the rhino mom over her own baby! We felt a bit more at ease once the rhinos started running away with seemingly no injury. Who knew that an elephant carries such power? As Indian Americans, we were used to Indian elephants which are not as big as African elephants. We think of rhinos as huge animals, but the elephant literally pushed the rhino around like it was nothing!”
“After the rhinos managed to escape some serious injury, the elephant started facing us and moving in our direction. I don’t know whether it would have attacked us, but we put some more distance between the safari vehicle and the aggressive elephant before we could find out. We spoke to our guide and he said that in the 10 years he had been working as a guide, he has never seen anything like this. We witnessed a lot of great sightings on our trip to the Park, but nothing could match this experience.”
“When you’re in the wild, have your camera ready, because you never know when something incredible might happen and it can be over in a flash. Don’t get discouraged if you don’t see much right away because it doesn’t mean that activity won’t pick up. My advice for those who come all the way from a different continent – is to do as much safari as possible, because when you get back home, you’ll definitely miss being able to see these incredible animals out in the wild every day.”