Hippo charges boat in northern Botswana
Video captured by a tourist on board a boat in northern Botswana showed the heart-pounding moment the vessel had to outrun a charging hippo, reports BritPanorama.
Oznur Bell, who took the video, was on the boat with her three children and a close friend as they traveled between camps during their stay in Botswana. “It was one of the most terrifying moments I’ve ever experienced,” Oznur said. “Once he started charging after us, the adrenaline was unbelievable.”
One of the journey’s guides, who was operating the vessel, spotted the hippo and slowed the boat in an attempt to avoid disturbing it. The vessel had just come upon an elephant when the hippo appeared. Oznur noted that she happened to have her phone in hand while filming the elephant, which allowed her to capture the ensuing chaos on camera.
Recognizing the danger, the guide informed the group, “Hold on — we need to speed up now before he decides to come after us.” Once the boat accelerated, they looked back and realized the hippo was indeed pursuing them.
Her video shows the massive mammal propelling itself through the water in a manner reminiscent of a human breaststroke. “You can actually see the smiles on the guides’ faces, not because it was funny, but because it was a smile of pure relief,” Oznur said. “For a few moments, every single person in the boat was genuinely worried.”
Oznur later expressed gratitude for having captured the chase on video, reinforcing the guides’ comments that such encounters are a rarity in the wild. “They said we had experienced a truly extraordinary encounter,” she remarked.
Hippos, which are herbivores, are the third-largest land animals after elephants and white rhinos, with weights reaching up to 8,000 pounds. Despite their size, they can move swiftly both in water and on land, aided by adaptations suited to their semi-aquatic environments.
The number of fatal encounters between hippos and humans is not precisely known, but estimates suggest a minimum of 500 deaths each year. Human encroachment remains one of their biggest threats, with the World Wildlife Fund categorizing hippos as “vulnerable” but not endangered.
“I feel incredibly lucky that I happened to be filming,” Oznur said, “because otherwise this extraordinary encounter would have lived only in our memories.”
