As a kid I really, really wanted to go to our local safari park.
How I would have laughed at the cheeky monkeys climbing on the roof and how I would have gasped at the rhinos and the hippos getting close enough to make the car vibrate…
Having seen the YouTube video of an elephant flipping over a car in a South African safari park, I’m not so sure this is a dream of mine anymore. To be fair, my local safari park isn’t exactly on a par with Kruger National Park, but this video is still enough to put me off.
It starts off when a group of tourists film the small car in front of them as an elephant wanders round it, inspecting it.
This goes on for a while before the animal starts to attack the vehicle. We don’t see the full thing, as the camera jumps around a lot and then the driver of this second car decides to high tail it out of there before they get attacked too, which was a pretty wise move.
Flipped Over Three Times
According to reports, the elephant flipped the car over 3 times and pushed it back about 120 feet. Thankfully, the passengers didn’t receive the kind of major injuries you might have expected in this sort of situation. One of the female passengers got treated in hospital for a “gore wound” but was released shortly afterwards. All in all, they seem to have had a bit of a lucky escape.
The elephant wasn’t so lucky, though. It was put down by safari bosses after this attack. News of this sad fate for the beast infuriated animal rights protestors over the planet. The park bosses said they had to do it because they couldn’t understand why it turned so aggressive, although some reports suggest that it was probably due to sexual tension.
Have you ever had a scary experience in a safari park?