Young elephant dunks brother's head under water during play fight

In my opinion, there are no other terrestrial mammal species on this planet that loves water more than elephants do. Watching the largest mammal on earth enjoying itself in water is always a very amusing and entertaining experience. Splashing and swimming around during a hot day is the elephant’s favorite day time activity besides eating. Lacking respiratory glands, elephants can not sweat to cool themselves. Elephants have to cool themselves by using different methods such as flapping their ears, standing in the shade during the heat of the day or go for a swim. It was during a safari on a hot summer afternoon in the Kruger National Park that we came across a herd of elephants swimming in a river.Show more

It looked like they were having so much fun. The young elephants in particular were very energetic with many ongoing play fights in the water between siblings. Our attention was drawn to a group of young males busy playing and wrestling in the water. One young male elephant was chasing his smaller brother around in the water. The young elephant caught up with his smaller brother and decided it was time for him to understand who was the big brother in charge here. We were totally amazed by this hilarious and typical sibling like behavior. The young elephant went on to climb on top of his smaller brother and dunked his head under the water using his two front legs to hold him down.

We were getting worried there for a few seconds as he kept his brother’s head under the water for longer than what we thought he would, seeing that they are only playing around. After a number of seconds, the smaller brother pulled his head out of the water, pushing his brother off him. Luckily elephants do have a large lung capacity and the youngster was just fine. It was such an entertaining sight to watch these play fighting siblings We all agreed that it was a typical ‘boys will be boys’ scenario with two brothers settling the ranks dominance while having fun at the same time.