When an angry elephant came charging at a Mahindra Jeep in India [Video]

It is said that you can never be sure about what’s around the corner. This saying proved to be true in the case of a group of people in Kerala, one of whom have posted this video online. As you can see in this video, some people are travelling in a Mahindra Jeep on what seems to be a jungle trail. The Jeep can be seen being driven slowly on the tarmac-less road until it comes to a stop just before a corner. Suddenly, there’s an elephant that comes charging towards the Jeep. In all probability, the giant mammal got annoyed by the sound created by the vehicle’s engine and tires. Here’s the footage –

Luckily, the driver sensed the approaching danger and stopped immediately. Also, he seems to have killed the engine as soon as he got aware of the approaching elephant. The wild animal came running towards the Jeep. However, it looks like the fact that the Jeep was motionless and didn’t threaten the mammal in any way, made him turn back. The driver’s timely action of coming to a halt and switching off the engine saved him from further irking the powerful animal. Phew!

There have been many incidents of people running into an elephant while driving on a road that passes through a jungle. As seen in the video, the best thing to do in such a scenario is to stop much before the elephant sees you approaching him. It’s also a good idea to remain as silent as possible. Of course, one needs to turn back and speed away, but this should be done only when he or she is a safe distance away from the animal. In this case, the Jeep was too close to the elephant and hence, it made perfect sense to stop dead in the tracks and remain motionless until the elephant went away.

Also, during the dark, one should switch off the headlamp as soon as he senses an elephant approaching him/her. Bright headlights tend to irritate these animals, which means they can vent out their anger on you and your vehicle. One should also totally refrain from honking at these animals as any sort of noise can irritate them. Hence, the best thing one can do is to turn back as soon as it’s possible to do so without further irritating these wild mammals. There have been some cases of an elephant or even a herd of them venting out their anger on humans and vehicles. The reason for this is that the engine sound, lights, horns, etc tend to irritate them a fair bit.

via Kerala videos on Youtube