This morning while out on safari, Moses my tracker, picked up very fresh spoor of Elephants. We decided to try and find these mighty beast of the wild. After a good hours’ tracking and predicting we found a small satellite breeding herd with a few juveniles, sub adults and to our disbelieve a very young calf no more than a month old. While most of them were feeding on the trees around us, the Calf and one of the juveniles gave us a spectacular show on animal behaviour.

They were running around and playing as children would do while the Matriarch kept an ever watchful eye on the youngest. After a while the calf turned his attention to us by charging our vehicle, and trumpeting with his ears flapping. He stopped about 10 metres away from us, turned, and ran back to his mother as quickly as he could. All this time she didn’t seem phased by his boystrousness at all. The whole vehicle broke out in fits of laughter for this youngsters bravado.

Mike Butler – Southern Camp