This baby elephant struggled to follow the rest of its family when its legs proved too small to climb a steep hill.

Oscar Betts

Kim Wolhuter filmed this elephant encounter on the Majale River in the Mashatu Game Reserve, Botswana. The elephants had been walking along the riverbed before they started climbing out.

They were there, Kim said, because “even once the surface water has disappeared there is still water under the sand, which elephants will often dig to get to”.

The banks of the river were very steep, being sheer cliffs in some places. Elephants are strong and surefooted, but poorly suited to climbing, so they had to find a gentler incline to make it out of the Majale River.

One of their number was quite simply too small to make it up the slope which gave the older elephants no trouble at all.

While unable to scale sheer cliffs, elephants carry a lot of weight and falling down can be a larger setback for them than it might be for a smaller and more nimble animal.

Their slow and steady pace makes falling less likely for them, but the calf with them was eager to keep up with the rest of his family and didnt show the same restraint.

While the older ones used their front knees to help them scale the bank, the calf didn’t have their length or height of stride and it struggled against the ground.

The little one scrabbled desperately at the cliff, little more than a step to the larger elephants, but regardless of how hard it tried, it just couldn’t get itself up and over the edge. It probably wasn’t helping it see the other herd members climb past with ease.

Maybe it would have managed to get up if it had been given enough time, but the rest of the herd would have had to wait for it. In this case, the matriarch of the herd was bringing up the rear, and it gave the calf a much needed push to get it up and over.

Matriarchs are usually the oldest elephant in the herd. While males leave once they mature, female elephants stay together with their families, and the matriarch looks after all of them with her experience.

This is a full-time job, especially with a child about. While it’s possible for elephants to have twins, they’ll typically give birth to a single calf which the whole herd raises communally.

While they would all help look after the calf, the herd as a whole is the responsibility of the matriarch, and in this case she waited at the rear to make sure all of the others managed to climb the steep bank safely.

Kim said “at first, the mother wasn’t aware of what was going on”, and by the time she realized and came back “her little one had already been helped”. The presence of the matriarch meant no one was going to be left behind in the riverbed today.

All elephant species are endangered, some critically so, as they face conflict with humans and the loss of their habitats.

Sightings like these are special, and it’s wonderful to see elephant families working together to overcome obstacles, but unless changes are made, humanity will be the one obstacle they cannot overcome.