Elephants are the largest land animals, adult elephants can weigh up to 3-6 tons. Due to their size and close social organization, adult elephants are immune to large predators and have no rivals. However, elephants have a long maturation period and prefer water and baby elephants grow, in the process inevitably being attacked by predators.
Hwange National Park at 5:30 am on September 20, 2021. Nine adult spotted hyenas followed a female and two baby elephants – one was about 5 years old, and the other was newborn.
The day before, my parents were still leisurely grazing among the elephants, but now the situation is not very good. Nine spotted hyenas surrounded the mother and son and ran forward, trying to bite the baby elephant’s leg.
The mother elephant ran up to one of the spotted hyenas and tried to drive it away from her cub, but this action didn’t seem to scare the hyenas. The baby elephant was as close to its mother as possible, but it was still too young to know what to do with the ferocious hyenas, and did not yet know how to protect herself or her younger brother.
Five minutes later, a spotted hyena bit the newborn elephant’s tail and pulled it aside. The mother immediately chased away the spotted hyena and ran after it into a bush nearly 10 meters away.
Apparently this was an inexperienced mother elephant, and within seconds of her absence, the remaining spotted hyenas continued to attack the young. One spotted hyena even bit off the trunk of the poor baby elephant.