Elephants of Mount Elgon

I haven't posted for a while as I have been organising an exhibition of my wildlife photos, but I'm back with a story of how aggressive some elephants can be.

Elephants are the largest of all the animals so they don't have any natural predators, except man of course, who kill them for the ivory, which fortunately is now banned. That's not to say the trade has completely died out but it is rare now and the rangers are always on the lookout for poachers.

Most of the time, while on safari, elephants seem like very placid and quite sedentary animals as they slowly make their way across the rolling plains of the Mara, eating the grass and leaves off the trees as they go. You will notice though if you're ever on safari that the guides don't get too close. There is no real reason to either, they are so big and create such a presence that you can watch them and photograph them at a reasonable distance. The elephants themselves are very tolerant of the tourists in their jeeps, so long as their space is not invaded and they are not threatened in anyway. If you do accidentally get too close they trumpet a warning in your direction and this is usually enough. You will often see an elephant walking down the tracks that the vehicles use, if you happen to be driving along the same track as an elephant you can be sure that it will be you that has to get off the road and give the elephant a wide birth.

This year we spent a few days at Mount Elgon national reserve, the terrain is very different there when compared with the Mara. There are large forested areas and the elephants like all the other animals that live there have adapted to their environment, they are smaller than the plains elephants and redder in colour. They are also more aggressive if disturbed.

While driving through the forest on one of the days we came upon two female elephants with two calves, one of the calves was just a baby. They were just crossing the road, we immediately stopped but kept the engine running, there was a brief standoff which is when I managed to get this photo. You can see from the photo that the two females were shielding the calves from view. Once they had nudged the young ones into the safety of the bushes, they faced towards us and went into a full charge, trunk raised, ears flapping, running straight at us. I have to admit I was very frightened, I'd say a lot more than the elephants were. The driver immediately put the jeep into reverse and we sped off backwards as fast as we could. They only stopped charging when they felt we were no longer close enough to the calves to be a threat. It was a very scary encounter, not one that I would want to experience again, there have been incidents where elephants have overturned jeeps, we were fortunate.

The whole experience left me shaken and with a greater respect for elephants.