In honour of the Rugby World Cup, we wanted to share a sportsy video! This is the super super cute moment a baby elephant decides to do some soccer practice using a piece of dung lying around!
Fitness in the wild can come in all sorts of shapes and sizes, and on a regular day – you can be pleasantly surprised when you see the animals in the middle of their routines! Maybe this elephant will be compared to Lionel Messi or Christiano Ronaldo one day!
When Dylan Royal, a guide at &Beyond Kirkman’s Kamp and Tengile River Lodge went out on his first-morning drive on the 30th of September with a group of tourists he was guiding, he never expected to be surprised by an elephant calf warming up with an early morning soccer session. LatestSightings.com asked Dylan how he came across this incredible moment, and his story was as enjoyable as the footage.
“We just left &Beyond Tengile in the Sabi sands driving through an area looking for a leopard we heard of from the lodge when we came across a spread-out herd of elephants with quite a few young ones present. We stopped to watch them for a while and it was not long after we stopped that the smallest calf burst out of the bush, into the road following his soccer ball made of elephant dung!”
“It seemed like he had been at it from even before we got there because he was so focused on his dung ball, that he did not even notice there was company. He seemed to be so impressed by his own skills that he even kicked and rolled the ball around using different strategies and all four of his legs. Young elephants are always up to something interesting and they are always entertaining to watch, but this was certainly one of the cutest and funniest things I’d ever seen or heard of.”
“We watched and enjoyed the sighting for a while longer and then I stopped filming. It was like the calf realized that I was no longer filming because it lost interest in the ball of dung and the herd walked a little way into the bush. When we lost sight of most of the herd we decided to move on. As we drove past the abandoned ball, the little one came bursting and trumpeting out at us, kicking up sand and throwing a bit of a tantrum, until we left the area and his toy alone!”
—WATCH—
“If you ever come across such a sighting, stay longer, and always keep filming until you are out of the area and sure that no more action is to come out of the sighting.“
