WATCH: Mother elephant crushes crocodile to protect her calf

A video captured by tourist Hans Henrik Haahr has gone viral, with over 600,000 views at the time of writing, for showing behaviour considered to be uncharacteristic of elephants.

The video shows an elephant crushing a crocodile to death in shallow waters somewhere in a Zambian river. 

TimesLIVE reported that this was because the crocodile was stalking the calf of an angry cow elephant. 

The violent attack took place in front of a group of travellers on safari and has been billed as a unique sighting due to the fact that elephants are considered generally peaceful and extremely caring animals. 

“Elephants are generally peaceful and extremely caring animals, However, females can become very aggressive when protecting a young calf. In fact, male elephants in musth can be just as aggressive,” explained Latest Sightings, the YouTube channel that shared the video. 

According to the channel, crocodiles are opportunistic hunters and have been known to prey on baby elephants. 

“This mother elephant was not taking any chances and was not happy with the crocodile being so close to her young calf. To protect her calf, she removed the threat of the crocodile entirely. 

“You can even see the elephant is lactating.

“She went up to the crocodile and started pushing it with her trunk and head, her behaviour got very aggressive, and she started trampling the crocodile. If you notice, the elephant doesn’t have tusks, so she is resorting to using her mouth for most of the attack. She even went as far as wrapping her trunk around the crocodile’s tail and tossing it around while trampling it,” added the YouTube channel.

Due to the general weight of elephants, the page assumes that it was this, coupled with the continuous trampling, that resulted in the inevitable death of the crocodile. 

Latest Sightings is a platform for visitors who are currently on a safari, be they rangers or tourists, to report the animals and events that they are seeing, in real-time. 

The sight allows users report their location, time and sighting to Latest Sightings, which in turn broadcasts these “tings” (a reported sighting) to other app users and also over various media. 

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