Wildcast

Elephants are such charismatic animals and just their shear size commands respect when you’re in an open vehicle and more especially when you’re on foot. When on foot I tend to keep away from them, although I was once seriously charged by a cow when out on one of my daily jogs in South Africa. She was gaining on me fast and I realised the only way out was to get out of sight. Leaving the trail and ducking into some dense bush I managed to lose sight of her. It worked but in my shattered state I still had to negotiate my way back to camp on foot.

I’ve also had a number of encounters with elephant cows in different situations and my filming vehicle bears testament to this. 4 holes from elephant tusks have added to its character.

But the Malilangwe elephants I’ve found to be amazingly chilled out and relaxed in my presence. I’ve been out the vehicle filming on the shoreline of Sosigi dam and had a herd of about 100 elephants surround the dam swimming and mud bathing. At one stage a group of about 10 elephants swam directly towards me and were just coming ashore when I had to shout to alert them that I was there. They stopped briefly and then slowly walked either side of me continuing on their way.

But they do so love to swim in the dams especially when it is so hot. It looks like so much fun one really just wants to jump in there and join them. But bad idea…. they share the water with crocodiles.

When the herd arrives at the dam they first drink, then swim and then the real fun ….. a mud bath. All this can find them spending over an hour at the dam.

Mud bathing not only helps to cool them, but keeps them cooler for longer than just water and it provides protection against external parasites. But of course we know that. There’s nothing better than a good mud pack. Well………. I haven’t actually tried it.

The elephant calves provide for much humour when mud bathing falling all over the place and keep coming back for more. Watching them reminds one so much of our own children at play. It’s just SO MUCH FUN!!!!!

The cows and calves of Malilangwe’s elephant herds tend to come together for these swimming parties and many bulls will attend too. But the older bigger bulls spend much of their time living solitary lives, sometimes joined by a few mates. But this changes in a hurry when a cow comes into oestrus. Using ultrasound for long distance communication it doesn’t take long for all the bulls on Malilangwe to know there’s a new lady in waiting. They descend on the cow herds. And one lucky, well most of the time she looks so unhappy, cow will be hounded by many tons of testosterone. Not much they can do but succumb to this massive hormone overdose.

I’ll soon be back on the trail of the elephants. When the wild dogs move on from denning my next move is to get back to follow these African icons.