Rotting Elephant Carcass

When we arrived at our third camp, Vumbura Plains, we were told that the big news at the moment was the dead elephant. We were eager to check it out, and on our first game drive we drove about fifteen minutes through the bush to take a look-see-smell-gag. Calling it a dead elephant was a drastic understatement. It was a five-day-old rotting elephant carcass.

As we drove up, we got a little whiff of the nose-crinkling odor. Next we saw the vultures. There were more than a hundred waiting...


...for the pride of lions (that had been using the carcass as an all-you-can-eat buffet for five days) to move on.


Then we saw it...


...with its skull totally exposed in a shallow pond.

The hypothesis is, the elephant tried to cross the pond but got stuck in the mud underneath, potentially by suction, then exhausted itself, fell down and drowned. Apparently elephants surrounded the elephant for a day or two, not letting anything eat their dead comrade.

Almost all the members of the pride were full to the gills. I say almost all because of the three cubs in the pride, one seemed to be rather sick and thin. It wasn't clear if he was sick from eating rotting meat or just generally a sick cub. Seems unlikely it would have made it this far being a sick cub, so potentially it got sick from the rotten meat. He was wheezing badly.



There were two males in the pride, and we found one nearby. He was absolutely stuffed, to the point of abdominal discomfort.



We only quickly visited the carcass the next day...



...and the lions were still taking advantage of their meal ticket, but the vultures were getting impatient.

On our last game drive at Vumbura (two Mondays ago I think), and on the seventh day of decay, the lions had moved on.



The creepy vultures and maribou storks (The Undertakers of the Delta) had moved in. Everyone expected hyenas to show up that night and dismantle the body.

We did see the big males lying in the sun that day far from the carcass, but we don't know if the little cub recovered.

PS
The scariest part of the trip happened at Vumbura. It was very unexpected. We were driving back from a short motorboat ride in the Delta, and a male elephant in musth (see Wikipedia or think "male heat") saw our truck and began sprinting toward the road to cut us off up ahead.

Our guide, Lettie, sped up to make sure that didn't happen, but it was close. The elephant had its ears pinned back, and its head down at a full sprint. They can move pretty fast when they want to. Once it was clear that we would get away, he trumpeted his fury. It all happened so fast, we've got no pictures of the angry bloke.

We were told earlier in the trip that a truck to an elephant is like a loaf of bread; they can easily pick it up with their tusks or roll it over if they are in the mood. Yikes.