On Saturday, a tweet showing a baby elephant getting absolutely destroyed by a buffalo before its "mother" came to the rescue went super viral. And rightly so.
National Geographic is amazing, captured this momma Elephant giving this water buffalo the WORK
The four-photo set was the perfect example of why you shouldn't get in the way of a mother and her young. Unfortunately, it's all a bit too good to be true.
The first two photos, of the moment a buffalo gores a poor, teeny-tiny baby elephant, are from National Geographic in 2014.
The other two photos, showing a buffalo getting flipped into the air by a huge elephant, is from January this year.
Kimberly Maurer took the photos on a trip to Kenya, where she witnessed the elephant and buffalo face-off.
"As we were watching the elephants grazing and moving toward us, the Cape Buffalo raised his head and stood up, which must have been a threatening movement for the elephants," she said.
"As the buffalo stepped toward the approaching elephants, the momma elephant trumpeted a warning and threw her trunk up in the air. The elephant moved closer to the buffalo and the buffalo decided to try to ram the elephant and they head butted. The buffalo fell to its knees after it lost the head butt."
Amazingly, the elephant continued to go after the buffalo, even after the two rammed heads.
“We were in complete shock as she then bent down and literally skewered the buffalo with her single tusk and lifted it straight up over her head with her tusk protruding from the other side of the buffalo," said Maurer.
The buffalo, Maurer reports, was very much dead.
So there you go. While the images from the tweet might not be completely accurate, the final two photos are of a mother elephant protecting the HELL out of her children.
The photos of the buffalo attacking the young elephant? Well, National Geographic reports it luckily escaped with only its pride severely bruised.
