A motorist in South Africa found out the hard way what can happen if you annoy an elephant as the massive animal rammed into and flipped over their vehicle.
The incident happened at the iSimangaliso Wetland Park in KwaZulu-Nata province earlier this month when a Ford SUV was driving through the park.
Footage shared online shows the moment the elephant started to push into the side of the SUV, forcing two wheels off the ground before flipping it onto its side and then onto its roof. While this was happening, a motorist filming the incident was beeping their horn, seemingly in a vain attempt to distract the elephant and make it stop its attack.
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The New York Post reports that the occupants of the SUV only suffered minor injuries in the incident and that officials from the iSimangaliso Wetland Park are investigating the incident to determine what caused the elephant to react the way it did.
There are a number of reserves and parks throughout South Africa that allow tourists to get up and close to elephants in their cars. Heck, we had elephants come within feet of our tiny Kia Picanto rental car on a road trip through South Africa a few years ago. For the most part, elephants are very peaceful but evidently, something happened off camera to really annoy this one. It’s fortunate that it stopped attacking the SUV after flipping it onto its roof as it could have very easily caused more damage and badly injured the occupants.
CarScoops’s own close encounter with an elephant in South Africa