One of the most appropriately named rivers we’ve seen in Africa is the Sand River, which runs through some of the private reserves west of Kruger National Park in South Africa. We’ve probably had over a dozen multi-day safaris in that area where we saw the Sand, and sand is what it usually is. Sometimes there’s enough water to support some reed beds, but often it’s totally dry.
In May 2022 when we visited Tengile River Lodge on the Sand River, we were amazed to see a lot of water was flowing. This drew elephants to the Sand to drink, something we didn’t usually see, and any time you have an elephant family doing something, there’s likely to be an interesting and funny episode.
The video Incident Report: Elephants Drink at the Usually Dry Sand River records what we saw when a family of elephants, including a tiny baby, visited the Sand to drink. It’s an example of why you need to be watchful even in your room while in Africa, because we were on our deck when the herd approached the water, cameras at the ready. The room was far enough from the river to require I film with the Z7II and a 50-500mm lens at full zoom for part of the video.
Baby elephants seem to be amazed at their trunks, to the point where they not only can’t use it effectively, they’re not entirely sure it’s a part of them. Elephants don’t drink by sucking the water up and swallowing, trunks are noses and they can’t drink through them any more than we can sniff up water and not end up with a major cough. What they do is suck water into the trunk, then squirt it out into their mouth. This isn’t intuitively obvious to the babies, though, and they’ll often try to drink like a horse or cow, putting their head down to the water. Elephants don’t have the neck for that, of course, and so the babies often end up falling, which is what happened in the video!
Elephants are one of the Big Five so they’re a target for most who go on safari, and they’re common in many areas of Africa, but many people don’t pay much attention to the antics of the babies, and as I’ve said, many don’t expect to see anything from their rooms. Don’t be one of the many; there’s a lot of fun things you’ll see!