A rare trunkless elephant has recently been spotted in the Linyanti Wildlife Reserve near King’s Pool Camp. Because an elephant’s trunk is the most important tool for eating, drinking, digging, bathing, smelling and socializing, this trunkless elephant has managed to survive in spite of incredible challenges.

Elephants drink between 30 and 50 gallons of water per day. Normally, an elephant will suck water in with his trunk and spray it into his mouth to drink. This trunkless elephant bends to drink directly from the water and eats from shorter bushes and small trees rather than stripping leaves from taller trees like other elephants. Though the trunkless elephant faces many challenges, it still lives and moves with a normal breeding herd.

The reason for this elephant’s amputation is unknown. The absence of the trunk could be a birth defect, the result of poaching snares or the aftermath of a crocodile or lion attack when the elephant was young.

The African Wild Dog is typically a very social animal that relies on the members of its pack for protection, hunting and survival. A visit to Mombo Camp, a luxury Wilderness Safaris camp in Botswana, affords guests a rare opportunity to see a lone wild dog that has been surviving without a typical pack for more than a year. The lone dog has, at times, been spotted with an unlikely pack consisting of black-backed jackals, spotted hyenas and even an aardwolf. The below video, taken by a guest at Mombo Camp, shows rare footage of the lone female dog teamed up with two black-backed jackals.

Wilderness Safaris has been keeping tabs on the lone dog since she was first spotted near Mombo Camp. The following has been pulled from sightings reports published by Wilderness Safaris.

Mombo Wild Dog History

“In the 1990s, Mombo was renowned as an area of unusually high wild dog density. This has all changed and the area is now well known for its very high numbers of lions. This high lion density has kept wild dog numbers very low. In fact over the past two or three years only one very small wild dog pack has managed to exist in the area. There were also visits from larger packs but these have been only of a very short duration.

The aforementioned small pack saw a gradual diminishing of its numbers until at some stage in early 2009 only one animal remained – an adult female. It was presumed that this animal would either emigrate to join dispersing animals and form a new pack or, more likely, would perish in the hostile environment, unable to hunt efficiently on her own and even less likely to protect a successful kill from large scavenging predators.

We have all been proven wrong and this single wild dog has thrived in Mombo’s prey-rich environment.”

Social Interaction

“Wild dogs have a distinct social hierarchy, relying on group cooperation to survive. They are also highly social animals used to operating in packs consisting of several individuals. This is what is so unusual about the lone wild dog at Mombo. She has been surviving on her own for over one year now in an area of very high lion density – not normally good odds for a wild dog to survive. But despite this she has been thriving, spending a lot of time close to Mombo Camp on Chief’s Island. In her search for company she has made friends with a family of five jackals and has one or two hyaenas which tolerate her as much as she them, with all three species often feeding on the same kill, normally made by the wild dog. The wild dog even took food back and regurgitated it for jackal pups when they were younger, and is even seen regurgitating for the adults as well.”

About the Aardwolf

“We have become used to seeing the dog with her two black-backed jackal companions and the occasional spotted hyaena, which is extraordinary in its own right. Recently, we spotted her resting in the shade late one afternoon, the jackals right next to her. As the temperature dropped to a more bearable level, a scuffling sound from a nearby burrow revealed another creature emerging for the evening – another jackal, perhaps? Closer inspection revealed the dog-like creature to be an aardwolf!

This shy and rare creature is in the hyaena family, but lives almost entirely on insects, so it is not likely to join the meat-eating wild dog’s “pack”, but what an incredible experience to see these three distantly related species in such close and comfortable company.”