Tourists watch elephant casually drink from garden hose in backyard

While on a safari holiday in the Kruger National Park we stayed with a group of tourists in a remote wilderness camp. These wilderness camps provide a true wilderness experience, situated far away from civilization and not fenced. Wildlife are free to move through the camp. This means staying in one of these camps can be adventurous and you have to be aware and vigilant at all times. While relaxing in camp one afternoon, we suddenly noticed a young bull elephant casually walking into the camp garden onto the lawn.

There was a large sprinkler busy irrigating the lawn and the elephant walked straight to that sprinkler. To our amazement the elephant pulled the garden hose from the sprinkler and shoved it into his mouth. We couldn’t believe we were watching an elephant in the garden of our camp, drinking water from a hose pipe. I grabbed my camera and started filming this unusual sight. The elephant was so relaxed he even lifted his front left foot and rested it on top of the sprinkler. This made for a hilarious pose. The elephant dropped the hose and effortlessly picked it up again and easily put it back into his mouth. Once the elephant had enough to drink, he threw down the garden hose. The elephant then started pulling the hose pipe, looking like he wanted to roll up the hose and put it away. We quickly realized he actually wanted to pull the hose pipe from the tap to see where the source of the water was. It was not long before the young bull became annoyed with trying to reel in the long hose pipe.

Luckily the elephant lost interest eventually and no taps were pulled out of the ground or garden hoses snapped. This was definitely one of the most unusual and funny sightings we’ve seen in the African wild. Elephants not only love water in general but they also love their water to be clean. When they have a choice, elephants are picky about their water and they will much rather prefer to drink clean and clear water instead of brown murky water. This elephant clearly knew that the water used for irrigation at the camp was much tastier and cleaner than the water in the nearby river.