A serene sightseeing trip through one of Africa\u2019s most celebrated wetlands took a harrowing turn when a charging elephant flipped two canoes carrying tourists from Britain and the US, sending them into crocodile-infested waters.<\/p>\n
The incident took place on Sept 27 in Botswana\u2019s Okavango Delta.<\/p>\n
A video that has since circulated widely online shows four tourists being poled slowly on dugout canoes, known locally as makoros, on a marshland where a herd of elephants is grazing.<\/p>\n
The canoes, however, drift too close to a cow and her two calves.<\/p>\n
A bull then emerges from the reeds and surges towards the canoes, striking them with its trunk and tusks.<\/p>\n
The boats tip over, plunging the tourists into the water.<\/p>\n
The elephant appears to retreat. But a second video shows it returning to knock one of the tourists, a woman, underwater. <\/p>\n
It pushes her into the water with its trunk. Fortunately for her, the water is murky and the bull misses hitting her with its tusks and crushing her with its legs.<\/p>\n
She escapes serious injury only after the animal moves off with its herd.<\/p>\n
According to witnesses, the guides who had been steering the canoes towards the animals abandoned their passengers and ran for the safety of the riverbank. <\/p>\n
\u201cShe was incredibly lucky,\u201d a former South African game ranger who reviewed the footage told the Daily Mail. \u201cHad the elephant held her down for a few more seconds, or gored her with its tusks, the outcome would likely have been fatal.\u201d<\/p>\n
The tourists eventually made it to shore, shaken but alive. <\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Camera equipment and phones were lost, according to staff at local tour companies, though all four visitors were able to walk away. <\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a blessing nobody was badly hurt,\u201d said a receptionist at one safari operator, according to the Daily Mail. \u201cBut wild animals can be very unpredictable.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Okavango Delta, a Unesco World Heritage site, is famed for its elephants, whose population in Botswana is the largest in Africa.<\/p>\n
Such encounters, while rare, are not unheard-of. <\/p>\n
In July, another elephant charged a boatload of British tourists in the delta, nearly overturning their vessel. <\/p>\n
Two months earlier, in neighbouring Zambia, a protective cow elephant killed two women from Britain and New Zealand who were on a walking safari.<\/p>\n
Botswana is home to roughly 130,000 elephants, part of a continent-wide population estimated at 415,000. <\/p>\n
While revered as symbols of African wilderness, elephants kill hundreds of people each year, most often when humans venture too close to mothers with calves.<\/p>\n
WildlifeWildlife conservationAnimalsAnimal welfareAnimal abuse<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A serene sightseeing trip through one of Africa\u2019s most celebrated wetlands took a harrowing turn when a charging…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":170730,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[90,56,54,55,4407],"class_list":{"0":"post-170729","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-wildlife","8":"tag-science","9":"tag-uk","10":"tag-united-kingdom","11":"tag-unitedkingdom","12":"tag-wildlife"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/170729","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=170729"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/170729\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/170730"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=170729"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=170729"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=170729"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}