00:00The warm tube.
00:01The Zambezi River, 1998.
00:04Paul Templer's 28, a Zimbabwean river guide running a multi-day canoe safari.
00:09A trip he's done more times than he can count,
00:12threading tourists between the hippos and the crocs.
00:15And everybody on that water's doing the exact same thing.
00:20Watching the crocodiles.
00:21Which, yeah, that's the mistake.
00:25Because the animal nobody's watching is the hippo.
00:28The vegetarian.
00:30The roly-poly one that looks almost like a joke.
00:34A hippo comes up directly under one of the canoes and flips it.
00:38And that's when it goes wrong.
00:39Fast.
00:40The thing opens its mouth and takes Paul in.
00:44Not once.
00:45Several times.
00:46Pulls him into the waist.
00:48Jaws shut over him.
00:50Let's go.
00:51Takes him again.
00:52And just picture that for a second.
00:55A mouth wide enough to swallow a grown man to the belt.
01:00Yeah.
01:01This really happened.
01:02Paul said later it felt like being inside a warm, sticky tube.
01:07He lost an arm in there.
01:09He lived.
01:10His apprentice guide didn't.
01:12Pulled under in the chaos, crushed, and drowned.
01:16Paul came through a stack of surgeries.
01:19Went back to guiding.
01:20Built a whole second career out of it.
01:22To this day, he gets introduced as the guy a hippo swallowed to the waist and decided
01:27to let go.
01:28The Impala.
01:30February 27th, 2018.
01:33A 22-year-old woman's at the Dinokang Game Reserve, about 28 miles north of Pretoria.
01:38And she's not some careless tourist.
01:40She's there for a study project, visiting a friend, hoping to interview the people who
01:45run the place.
01:45The reserve's famous for one man, Kevin Richardson, the Lion Whisperer.
01:51The guy who built a whole career on understanding lions like nobody else alive.
01:57That day, Richardson's off walking three of his lions somewhere else on the reserve.
02:01One lioness locks onto an Impala and gives chase.
02:05Normal.
02:06Lions chase Impala.
02:07Except she doesn't stop.
02:09She blows past it, leaves Richardson behind, and just keeps running.
02:14About two kilometers, over a mile, off the back of the hunt.
02:19The hunt didn't end.
02:20It changed targets.
02:23She comes up on the young woman by a vehicle, and she's on her before anyone can move,
02:27the way a lion brings down prey.
02:29The net care paramedics who reached her described injuries that were extreme.
02:35Bystanders had already tried to resuscitate her.
02:38She died at the scene.
02:40Richardson said he was devastated.
02:42Police opened an investigation, and the reserve was very careful to point out she was a sanctuary
02:47animal, not wild.
02:49The wall.
02:50August 3rd, 2025.
02:52Asher Watkins is 52.
02:55A wealthy Texas ranch and real estate guy, and a serious trophy hunter.
03:00You know the type.
03:01He flies out to Limpopo, South Africa, with a professional hunter and a tracker after one
03:06specific prize.
03:08A Cape Buffalo.
03:10And here's a fun fact the guides will tell you.
03:13They've got a nickname for the Cape Buffalo.
03:16They call it Black Death.
03:19Not as a joke.
03:20Because it kills hunters.
03:23Watkins wants its head on a wall.
03:26So, rifle, professional at his side.
03:29He stalks a big bull through thick brush, closing the distance, quietly, through cover.
03:35And the brush explodes.
03:38The bull turns and charges before anyone can put a clean shot in it.
03:42Over a ton of muscle, close to a thousand kilograms, comes through the bush horns first.
03:48Rams him.
03:49Drives the horns in.
03:51Throws him to the ground.
03:52He died almost exactly where he fell.
03:57This guy had everything the other people in this video didn't.
04:00The rifle.
04:02Decades of experience.
04:03A pro standing right there.
04:06He crossed an ocean to kill the animal they call Black Death.
04:11The bull walked back into the brush without a scratch.
04:14The dead end.
04:16Alright guys, this one's early 2000s.
04:18A walking safari.
04:19The kind they sell to Americans as a romantic little adventure.
04:23A woman books it through a travel agency back home.
04:26Flies out with a friend.
04:27The pitch is, no boring metal vehicle between you and the wildlife.
04:31Just you, the bush, your own two feet.
04:35You can already feel where this is going.
04:37The guides walk the group out onto a narrow peninsula.
04:40A finger of land with water on three sides.
04:43And if you know animals, you know exactly what that is.
04:46It's a dead end.
04:48A spot where something big can corner you with nowhere left to run.
04:52And something big does.
04:54A rhino.
04:55It charges and one horn goes into her abdomen.
04:59Out here, the nearest hospital isn't minutes away.
05:02It's kilometers across rough ground.
05:04They carry her back toward camp, but she never reaches medical care.
05:08She died in her husband's arms, in a tent, somewhere out in the bush.
05:13Her husband sued the American tour operator for negligence.
05:17Said it was reckless to march paying clients onto that peninsula on foot.
05:21The case settled for $950,000.
05:24The footage.
05:25Early April, 2024.
05:28Gail Mattson, 79.
05:30From Minnesota.
05:31And this is the trip she'd been waiting for.
05:33A group safari through Kafui National Park in Zambia.
05:37Open truck.
05:38Big, wide sky.
05:40And I want to be clear about this one.
05:42She did nothing wrong.
05:44She was exactly where the rules say to be.
05:47Inside the vehicle.
05:50A bull elephant shows up and starts moving toward the truck.
05:53And there's footage of this.
05:55That's the eerie part.
05:56You can watch the driver throw it in reverse, backing off as the elephant closes the gap.
06:02Step by step by step.
06:05And then it charges.
06:07Full speed into the side of the truck, hard enough to flip the whole thing over.
06:12The passengers get thrown.
06:14Four of them are hurt and survive.
06:16Gail doesn't.
06:17She died shortly after of her injuries.
06:20The entire charge got caught on video, and it went around the world.
06:24The tour operator promised a full safety review.
06:28One more photo.
06:29July, 2024.
06:32A Spanish tourist on a self-drive safari through Pilanesburg National Park in South Africa,
06:37sharing a car with other travelers.
06:40They stopped near a herd of elephants.
06:42And not just any herd.
06:44One with several calves.
06:46A breeding herd.
06:48The park rules name this exact situation as one of the most dangerous on the whole reserve,
06:53and ban it in plain language.
06:55His fellow passengers tell him not to.
06:59Other visitors tell him not to.
07:01He gets out anyway, and walks toward the herd for a closer photo.
07:07An adult elephant comes for him.
07:09He turns to run, and, um, yeah.
07:14There's no race.
07:15An elephant covers ground faster than a sprinting man.
07:19It catches him, knocks him down, tramples him.
07:22He died of his injuries.
07:25And the thing is, the warning wasn't quiet.
07:28His own car was basically yelling it at him.
07:31The rule wasn't unclear.
07:34He just decided it must have been written for somebody else.
07:37The calm part.
07:38June 5th, 2024.
07:40Lisa Manders, from New Jersey, is on a safari in Zambia with her husband, Craig.
07:46They'd book through an American operator.
07:48We're staying at a lodge, doing activities along a river.
07:50A river with hippos in it.
07:52And here's the mental trap, right?
07:55Everybody pictures safari danger as something with claws out on the open plains.
07:59The river bank feels like the calm part, the chill part of the day, the part where you finally exhale.
08:07According to the lawsuit that followed, the guides had them standing on or near the bank while a hippo was
08:13clearly visible nearby.
08:14And it came out of the water.
08:17The hippo exploded up the bank and charged straight at Lisa, knocked her down, bit her.
08:23Craig watched the whole thing.
08:24There was nothing anyone could do in time.
08:27Craig sued the American operator, African Portfolio, argued the guides were undertrained and that parking guests on the bank next
08:35to a visible hippo was a needless, avoidable risk.
08:38By the book.
08:39Early July, 2025.
08:41Two women on a luxury walking safari in South Luangwa National Park in Zambia, near the Big Lagoon bush camp.
08:49Easton Janet Taylor, 68, from the UK.
08:52Allison Jean Taylor, 67, from New Zealand.
08:56Early one morning, they're walking with their guides between the camp's facilities.
09:01And this is the one that's different.
09:03Because they did everything right.
09:05They weren't wandering off alone.
09:07They weren't blowing past a warning.
09:10They were on a guided, organized walk, doing exactly what they'd been told.
09:15And they walk straight into an elephant cow with a calf.
09:18The single thing every safety briefing on Earth marks as a hard no.
09:24The cow charges.
09:26The guides reportedly even fire warning shots into the air.
09:30She comes through them anyway.
09:32Both women are knocked down and trampled.
09:35The operator announced a thorough review of its walking safari procedures.
09:39And look, that's what makes this one sit wrong.
09:42There's no lesson to hand you here.
09:44No rule they broke.
09:46They went by the book.
09:47The window, June 1st, 2015.
09:51Catherine Chappell's 29, an American visual effects editor.
09:56She'd worked on Game of Thrones, on an Emmy-winning team.
09:59Her whole job was building convincing danger on a screen.
10:03And she hadn't flown to South Africa for thrills.
10:07She came as a volunteer, raising money to protect wild animals.
10:12That day, she's in a safari vehicle with a guide at the lion park just outside Johannesburg.
10:17And inside the lion enclosure, there's exactly one rule.
10:22It's about as simple as a rule gets.
10:24Keep your windows up.
10:27For a better photo, car stopped near a group of lions.
10:30She rolls hers down.
10:32A lioness is already moving along the side of the car.
10:36Other drivers are leaning on their horns.
10:38The warning is, literally, honking at her.
10:42The lioness comes through the open window anyway,
10:46takes Catherine by the neck, and pulls her out.
10:48The guide fought to beat the animal off and stop the bleeding.
10:52She was gone before help could reach her.
10:55Enjoyed the video?
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10:57And leave your recommendations for future videos in the comments.
