{"id":463117,"date":"2026-06-05T23:14:07","date_gmt":"2026-06-05T23:14:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/463117\/"},"modified":"2026-06-05T23:14:07","modified_gmt":"2026-06-05T23:14:07","slug":"couple-scrolling-their-phones-at-resort-misses-giant-animal-raiding-their-snacks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/463117\/","title":{"rendered":"Couple Scrolling Their Phones At Resort Misses Giant Animal Raiding Their Snacks"},"content":{"rendered":"

A stay at South Africa’s Aquila Private Game Reserve<\/a> offers guests the chance to spot some remarkable wildlife. But for one pair of visitors, the most memorable animal encounter happened when they weren’t paying attention at all.<\/p>\n

This week, footage emerged showing a man and woman lounging in the sun near the safari lodge’s swimming pool. The pair can be seen looking at their phones, having no idea what\u2019s about to happen.<\/p>\n

Seizing upon the opportunity, a local baboon then sneaks up from behind, casually helping himself to their tray of snacks. The man and woman, meanwhile, appear totally oblivious until moments before a quick-thinking reserve employee finally intervenes:<\/p>\n

As highly intelligent and adaptable primates, baboons are known to make the most of the world around them<\/a>. And in the case of distracted guests, that landed him some free food.<\/p>\n

What he left behind, however, was an incredible memory.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhile Aquila has a strict no-wildlife-interaction policy, the animals don\u2019t always read the rulebook,\u201d a spokesperson for the reserve told The Dodo. \u201cEncounters like this are unusual, but it serves as a humorous reminder that we share the reserve with free-roaming wildlife. We always encourage guests to remain aware of their surroundings and never feed or approach animals.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A stay at South Africa’s Aquila Private Game Reserve offers guests the chance to spot some remarkable wildlife.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":463118,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[1179,128173,148123,1178,111,139,69,147,1177,19301,1175,406],"class_list":["post-463117","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wildlife","tag-animal-encounters","tag-baboons","tag-best-trip-ever","tag-daily-dodo","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-science","tag-standard","tag-stephen-messenger","tag-the-dodo","tag-wildlife"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/463117","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=463117"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/463117\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/463118"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=463117"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=463117"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=463117"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}