The 2025 Botswana Journals, Ch. 42: Elephant Behavior: The Vigilent Aunties

     On our morning game drive in Mashatu Game Reserve, we come across a small elephant herd casually ripping branches off the bushes.

    Some, like the elephant in the video below, just eat the prime part without damaging the branch.   Well, very much, anyway.

    Then we see the tiny, very young baby, and that explains every bit of what the elephants did in the next few minutes.   In this photo, they have come close to the baby to protect it.

This calf is very young.

        One elephant tries to stay between the baby and us, but I managed to get a couple of shots of it in the open.

    Like us, they are heading into the river bottom.   We stop at the top of the access trail and wait, because elephants always have the right-of-way.

    The largest elephant, the one leading the way, and the one I assume is the mother of the calf, stops to look at us.   She doesn't quite give a warning, but her flared ears signal to us to keep our distance.   However, elephants also flare and flap with large ears to cool off.   There are many blood vessels in the ears, and the flapping-and-flaring cools much like a car's radiator.

    One of the smaller elephants, probably an auntie, has a different opinion, and it definitely signals a warning.   First, by reaching out its trunk and smelling us.

Then, the ear flares and the head wags.   Definitely a warning.

 

    Still signaling, it turns to follow the others into the river bottom.

 

    As we drive down the slope behind them, one of the aunties trumpets, and suddenly,  all the elephants surround the baby.

    We drive a little distance away from them, and everyone relaxes.

    The elephants have come for water.

    How near we are to the baby is no longer a concern, and it is out in the open with no elephant intervening.

Mum and calf.

A cool video shot into the sun with my cell phone.

    And there you have a primer on how elephants protect their young.

And away they go, baby and all.

Some Extras:

A small flock of red-billed teals. LIFER

Another LIFER:   

Painted snipe!!!

Can you see them?

So lucky the female decided to stretch right in front of me!!!

White-beasted cormorants

A Kori bustard

Sleeping leopard in a tree.

A steenbok, one of the dwarf antelope.

Whoa ho!   A glimpse of an eland, the largest antelope in Africa.   We've been on the lookout for them because we heard there was a large herd in this area.