How the hell..
do you miss an elephant?
Tom Siebel has been seriously injured after being trampled by an elephant. Siebel was on a photo safari in Tanzania with a guide watching a group of elephants when one animal charged. The guide fired at the elephant but missed. The animal attacked the guide before going for Siebel, breaking his ribs, trampling one leg and …
Ok, maybe it's not readily apparent, but I'd bet 1 to 100 that the elephant or one of his family has been targetted at some point by poachers.
Whether he was reacting to the presence of humans or the smell of diesel, the lesson is the same... stay away from elephants -- they don't like us any more.
There's a reason that the guide was carrying a gun - they were observing wild animals, in the wild.
It's not particularly dangerous to watch elephants but there are risks, obviously. (And it's pretty easy to miss an elephant charging at you. Lots of people were killed like this when elephant hunting was en vogue).
That's why they're called wild animals.
"Siebel told the paper the two men were watching the animals from a distance of 200 yards: 'There was no apparent reason, nothing that should have made it feel threatened,' Siebel said. 'It was quiet, and then the quiet stopped...'"
I do so love how, on one hand, humans say that animals are dumb and don't think like us and that's why we can kill them, and then on the other hand (like here), imply that animals do think like humans.
Newsflash -- just because YOU didn't see a reason to feel threatened doesn't mean the elephant (or anything/anyone else, for that matter) won't feel threatened. It may have been the presence of people (since the animals likely equate all people with poachers -- you know, like how most "Western" people equate virtually all people of Middle Eastern descent with terrorists), it may have been the weapon the guide was carrying, it may have been a sound, a smell, or anything else. The article didn't mention, but maybe there was a baby/young elephant in the group, and the charging elephant was being (over-)protective.
To put it into perspective -- how many people have killed animals (bears, mountain lions, alligators, snakes, etc) because those animals got "too close", even without the animal showing any interest in the person. And, of course, "too close" is relative to each person based on their fears, experiences, and tales from other people.