Hippo Attacks on Mekoros
 

Great show this past weekend on the National Geographic Network - “Danger in the Delta”. The show examines, in a detective style format, the causes of two hippo attacks on mekoros in the Okavango Delta. One attack resulted in the death of a honeymooner guest at one of the lodges (name not mentioned) and the second attack seriously injured a guide who was filming a documentary. The program poses a number of theories of why the attacks occurred before coming up with the definitive reason behind the attacks. For those of you who did not see the program which of the following do you think was the reason the hippo attacks?

Situation:
-Both attacks by a solo hippo in a very narrow, shallow reed filled side channel
-Both attacks in December in the middle of a draught
-The people attacked never saw the hippo prior to the attack
- In both cases the hippos immediately fled and were not seen after the attack

1)Hippos have been hunted and killed by man to such a degree that over 1,000s of years hippos now view man as a natural enemy and when a mekoro approached in a narrow channel it chose to attack.

2)Hippo’s are very territorial and will aggressively defend their territory

3)December in that particular year was very dry and the hippos were severely stressed with the only vegetation available for grazing being right on the channel banks. This heightened stress was the primary reason behind the attack.

4)With draught, the hippos were more concentrated and hippo versus hippo fights were numerous. Young bulls that had been injured in fights will often hide & seek refuge in the narrow channels. Injured bulls would strike anything that came close to them.

5)Hippos – can see very well at a distance, but are near-sighted and in the narrow reed choked channels they could not discern what was coming at them and attacked.

6)Hippos in this situation were mothers with young calves. Mothers will take their young away from pods to protect them from being accidentally crushed or deliberately attacked by males. Mother’s with a baby in this situation are very dangerous and would have attacked the mekoros.

Greendrake-
I saw that recently and also thought it was a really interesting documentary.
It was fascinating to learn the theories behind those hippo attacks.
Very well done.

Makes Ruth and I realize all the more how lucky she was that she and her guide survived unscathed being dumped out of their canoe. It wasn't an attack. Their canoe passed over the submerged hippo (a side channel of the Zambezi River) and apparently startled it. Still, it was just luck that when the hippo surfaced under the canoe and spilled them into the water, the hippo went right while they went into the water on the left.

Unforgettable.

Jim

Every time I think about Ruth's experience I get chills up my spine. I canoed that channel twice, and there were hippos in there. They would challenge us but never dumped us. I know your situation was a fluke, but I, too, am glad it turned out OK!

Thanks.
Canoes were already off my list, now I'm taking Mekoro's during drought off. These days the only reason I mekoro is for the chance of a bird like Pels, otherwise I'd much rather be on a game drive.

Well it does make one wonder if this has been going on all along and is only now being publicized due to the higher amounts of tourism in these areas. It's also surprising that this doesn't happen more often.
I just hope that when I go to L.Vumbura and the Mana pools that I don't run into any pi$$ed off bulls or get in mamas way.

Thanks for the tip. I'll look for this program to re-run and will try to catch it on dvr.

Sad, because our private mekoro experience at Jao was one of the very favorite parts of our trip.

I think you may be right re. it happening more than is publicized. Kind of like the town mayor in Jaws not wanting the word to get out that a great white was chewing on tourists.

On the other hand, the owner of one of the lodges we stayed at, when told of what happened, said that when a hippo accident occurs, it is ALWAYS the fault of the guide. And looking back, our lead guide (four canoes--a guest and guide in each), did violate one of the rules he listed in the safety briefing. Always stay to the shallows. If hippos are present, wait til they move off. I guess he got a little complacent, because I was thinking about how odd it was for him to be violating his own rule as we paddled down the deep side of the channel (and no hippos on the shallow side opposite) just before the hippo levitated Ruth's canoe out of the water.

We took advantage of every single game drive/walk/canoe trip/boat trip offered. As much as we love to canoe, we consciously decided not to do a multi-day trip down the Zambezi, because we didn't want to take away from the game drives. The day canoe trips we did take were a perfect complement to the drives/walks. We got closer to big herds of buffalo, crocodiles, birds, and, yes, hippos, than we had in the other ways we viewed game.

And, here's the great part--Ruth would go down the Chifungulu Channel again in a heart beat--although her heart might beat a bit faster than before.

Jim

Jim

NapaMatt,
The only 2 Pel's Fishing Owls I've ever seen were on walks with my feet firmly on the ground.

Interesting info. Thanks, GreenDrake.

For those who have canoe or mekoro opportunties, I would not worry about doing them. There are hundreds of these water activities going on every day without incident. Of course, we don't hear about those. Just like traffic accidents are what makes news not the uneventful drives.

The importance of safety and paying attention to the safety briefings is underscored with this info.

Steeliejim, Was your head canoe guide the same person who guided your vehicle?
I recall you had mentioned a displeasure with how he approached the wildlife.

For those that plan to see this program in the future and don't want the "mystery" answer revealed, don't read any further as I will now give the answer.

1) Hippos view man as natural enemy - true in many parts of Africa, however they are protected in the Delta and no evidence to support this as the reason.

2) Hippos territorial and will protect their turf - This is absolutely true, but this is in cases where they are in a pod. Also ,the hippos disappeared after the attack - more proof they were not protecting turf.

3)Stressed with much less food available than normallly. Again true, but hippos will most often flee when territory not at stake and hippos are ofen stressed at the end of the dry season and do not routinely attack mekoros.

5) Hippos nearsighted and were startled - no evidence hippos are near sighted. Expert on show thought they had excellent eye sight.

6)Mother with calf - The show did present an attack in Kreuger where a mother with calf attacked and killed a tourist, but in the Delta cases the the depth of water and the surrounding habitat were not areas where a mother would take an infant to hide. Plus the fact that the hippo was not in the shallow channel by the approaching mekoro prior to the to the attack discount this possibility. This was fairly shallow water and a hippo standing would have been at least a meter out of the water.

The correct answer per the program was

4)With draught, the hippos were more concentrated and hippo versus hippo fights were numerous. Young bulls that had been injured in fights will often hide & seek refuge in the narrow channels. Injured bulls would strike anything that came close to them.


These hippos were observed to have wounds on their heads. They also were hiding so as not to be seen by other bulls. To be able to hide in this in these shallow channels required that they actually had to dig out a pit on the river bottom so that they would not be seen by the hippos they were fleeing. This is why they were never seen despite the water being fairly shallow. Bottom line, a wounded animal is a very dangerous animal - regardless of the species.

No, Lynn,

The lead guide's name was Moses, and he was from Sausage Tree, but I thought he was quite good (I started out in the lead canoe with him, but switched with someone in our party halfway through the trip to give her the benefit of his knowledge), which was quite a bit greater than the other guides. He knew every bird that we saw, not only by its common name but by its Latin name as well. I think he just had a momentary lapse. He was quite embarassed and, I think, more shaken than Ruth. I KNOW I was more shaken than she, watching as the hippo erupted out of the water pushing the canoe upward on its back with no more effort than if it was a leaf.

Beaven, my infamous guide from Susuwe had bad scars on his arms and legs from a hippo attack. At his previous camp, he took out a group of 16 pre-teen-age kids (their parents were all partying it up at the lodge) on the flatboat and the engine died near a pod of hippos. One kid freaked out, jumped in the water and tried to swim away. Beaven saw a hippo coming, jumped in the water, threw the kid back on the boat and dove under the water to avoid the hippo, but the hippo saw him and grabbed him by the arm and threw him up in the air, he tried to swim away and the hippo again bit him. He managed to get on the boat and radio for help and was in the hospital for 3 1/2 months. I got the chills just hearing this story over sundowners and the scars are quite noticable. He asked the kid why he jumped in and the kid said he was scared. On a bright note, the parents of the boy paid his hospital bills.

Lynn

WE needed to use the mekoro to access the potential roosting spots, otherwise I would not have taken a mekoro ride instead of a game drive

Greendrake,

I look forward to seeing this program....whenever they air it here in India. Thanks for the info. Personally speaking, i'm not into mokoros. I've done it once and it was a FANTASTIC experience. But while in Botswana, i dont trade my game drives for anything else.....

Dennis,

My Goodness!!! Beavan really is a courageous guide.....he made all the right moves to save the kid, but i'm glad he was lucky to get out of the incident without much damage.

Hari

I suspect the programme's 'correct' answer doesn't necessarily apply to other such incidents. These two incidents occurred in the same month of the same year, so, yes, the 'drought' answer is probably the most likely in these cases. I'd like to see an in-depth examination by NG of a larger number of 'attacks'. A number of different reasons would probably emerge.

Re Sherry's remark: yes, it does happen more often, and is frequently reported. I can recall three other fatal incidents in the last few years. One was the death of a male tourist in a mokoro in the delta, another was a multiple fatality on Lake Malawi (adults and children killed), and the third was a woman tourist who one evening walked between a hippo and her calf in (I think) the Laikipia area of Kenya.

Like Lynn, I'm not deterred personally by such incidents. I must admit feeling some anxiety on my first safari when our mekoros were hastily returning to Xigera camp in the dusk, but that's one of the reasons I go to Africa.

John

Talking about delta weather patterns.....any guess as to this year's rainfall prediction? Hopefully it is a "normal" year and nothing abnormal like last summer.......

Hari

"I suspect the programme's 'correct' answer doesn't necessarily apply to other such incidents. " Afrigalah

John, you are absolutely right. The aim in this program was to solve this particular puzzle: 1) solo hippo, 2) narrow channel reed choked channel, 3) hippo totally hidden in only several feet of water 4) no sign of hippo prior to attack 5) hippo takes off after the attack. 6) Hippos in the area stressed and fighting.

The program points out several instances in other areas where any of the other proposed theories with the exception of "near-sightedness" could potentially produce an attack under the right circumstances.

I also thought the show did a fairly good job of portraying that the attacks in the Delta were not every day incidents and the "unusual" nature of the attacks created the "mystery" theme of the program.

That being said, I have had two different guides relate to me hair-raising hippo confrontations. Both, however, were on land.

My guide at Kafunta in the SLP related to me an incident where a hippo came up out of the water and charged him during a walk with guests. He thought he was a goner as all he saw were the flapping jaws of the hippos only yards from him. A warning shot from the scout saved him and the hippo veered off. He said his knees were trembling against the steering wheel, as he got into the vehicle to drive the guests back to camp.

The second incident told to me was by a Zim guide who was leading a private group in the S.Luangwa. A fellow guide and friend of his accidently walked into a hippo at night in a camp. The hippo attacked and bit his hip off and his friend bled to death.

Fred,

It's just bad luck, i think. "being at the wrong place at the wrong time".....like being in the wrong street at the wrong time or whatever...similar analogy.

Hari

Kwando's double decker boat was sunk by a bull hippo bite -- fortunately the guests were able to stand on the upper deck as the boat rested on the bottom of the channel and no one was injured.

I also met a women who's friend was a world class kayaker taken to the bottom and drown by a hippo on the Zambezi River.

The fact is hippos really do kill more people than any other African mammal, I've been told that it is more than all the other mammals added together.

Hari - no doubt the cruel hand of fate sadly played a part. The honeymooner couple in the program were paddling on the main channel and on their way back to camp. They came upon elephants that blocked their route back to the camp. Afer waiting for some time they asked their guide if there was an alternative route they could take to get back to camp. That is when they diverted to the smaller side channel and were attacked.

Predator - incredible!! A double decker sunk!! I can watch hippos interact for hours, but I have a very HEALTHY respect for them, particulary walking around at camp at night.