Elephant Crossing

By the middle of the dry season in Botswana, the elephants are having a hard time finding grass to eat on the mainland. The bachelor elephants begin crossing the Chobe River to the middle islands to find lush sweet grass - they can do this because they are big enough that the crocodiles won't bother them. The mother elephants have to be a little more desperate to make the crossing, as they have their babies to think about, a much more vulnerable target to the hungry crocs. It's a brave matriarch that decides to take her herd of mothers and babies across the river, and they have a very special way of doing it, as you will see in this video. The mothers extend their tails and the babies their trunks... as you can see, the babies get completely submerged in this crossing, so they have to stick close to the mothers, who know just the best path for a good foothold. This particular herd that we watched crossed safely with no casualties. Sorry for the 'waves'... we were in a boat :)