Dr. Rae Wynn-Grant on Being Chased by an Elephant and Why She’ll Take Her Chances with Bears

This article originally appeared on Backpacker

Out Alive is a podcast about real people who survived the unsurvivable. Check out more seasons and episodes here.

Dr. Rae Wynn-Grant, a large carnivore wildlife ecologist, recounts her heart-pounding survival story of being chased by a wild elephant. With unflinching honesty, Dr. Wynn-Grant reveals that the true dangers in her work often transcend the wild creatures she dedicates her life to.

For more candid and thought-provoking conversations, don’t miss Dr. Rae Wynn-Grant’s own podcast, PBS’s Going Wild with Dr. Rae Wynn-Grant, where she further explores the intricate bond between humans and nature.

Transcript

Host: Dr. Rae Wynn-Grant is a wildlife ecologist with an expertise in large carnivores, specifically bears and lions. She’s also the co-host of the newly revived TV show, Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom. She’s the host of the PBS Nature podcast, Going Wild with Dr. Rae Wynn-Grant, and a fellow of the National Geographic Society.

I followed her on Instagram a few years ago mostly for the cute bear cub photos, so I jumped at the chance to interview her. I was sure she must have some close calls and survival stories we could chat about. And I was not disappointed. But before we delve deeper into the wilds of her experiences, let’s rewind back to the roots of Dr. Wynn-Grant’s passion. How did she embark on this path to become a wildlife ecologist and specifically someone who was willing to climb into the den of a sleeping bear?

Dr. Rae Wynn-Grant: I had a pretty non-traditional journey into my career. So I grew up as an urban kid, as an urban teenager, as an urban young adult, and didn’t have a family that recreated in the outdoors.

We didn’t go hiking and camping or fishing or hunting or any of that. And so I had a wonderful childhood with my family. We did all kinds of things. My parents exposed me to so much, even through travel, but decidedly not necessarily in nature. And so I actually became enthralled with wildlife and wild places by watching television. So as a little kid, I would just claim "I want to be a nature show host when I grow up."

Host: Dr. Wynn-Grant was steadfast in her desire to be a nature show host as she entered college, where she shared her ambition with her advisor. They recommended that environmental science could be a path, and even despite never hearing of the field, she declared it her major.

Dr. Rae Wynn-Grant: The rest is history. Environmental science is truly where I found my purpose. It’s where I realized that nature show host or not, there is a science behind saving wild animals and wild places. And there’s an urgency and tremendous need for that.

Host: She completed her undergrad at Emory University, her master’s at Yale, and a PhD at Columbia, as well as her postdoctoral studies.

Dr. Rae Wynn-Grant: I have literally spent the last 20 years doing ecology, focusing on wild animals and endangered species, and particularly studying large carnivores. So I have my expertise in African lions and North American bears, I now run a mountain lion research project in California and it’s something about those top predators that has just always captivated me.

In this line of work, not everyone has these experiences, but I have definitely had a number of near-death experiences with wild animals and ones that I will truly never forget.

But I spent a good part of my master’s training in central Tanzania studying lions. I worked outside of national parks, and I had to spend a lot of time just bouncing around off-road in this savannah landscape.

One of the things I remember the most about that summer is how slow I was driving all the time. Off roading in general, but especially in a place like that, that is just so vast and so bumpy. So everything took so long.

Host: The car was like something from an Indiana Jones movie. A beat up, topless Land Cruiser. On one particular drive, she was with a local Tanzanian researcher named Joel.

Dr. Rae Wynn-Grant: I remember that he was driving, which was nice, because it gave me a little bit of a break from the 5 mile an hour bumps. And we ran into a herd of elephants. That was not abnormal. It happened all the time, and we’d always give them their space.

These weren’t elephants that were necessarily habituated to seeing people around. We’re off-road, so we’re very much in their space. And whenever we’d run into elephants, we’d turn the car around, or really make wide turns to give them as much space as possible and not be threatening. And that’s exactly what we did on this day.

They must have been maybe 200 yards in the distance, which is typically far enough, at least in our experience there. I remember, because I hadn’t been driving, I wasn’t paying very close attention to where we were, and we were off road in the savannah, driving for hours. I was like, as long as Joel knows the direction we’re going in, fine.

And we turned around, and so the elephants were behind us, and we were going a different way. And we started to feel that classic boom with the earth shaking. If you’ve seen the original Jurassic Park movie where the Tyrannosaurus Rex is chasing after someone and you don’t know what that boom sound is until you realize that it is a several ton animal that is running and the earth is moving along with you.

And then I remember this moment as if it lasted for, but it was literally a moment. There’s this huge male elephant who was running after our car. And they go so fast when they’re running. And they cover so much ground. We went from minding our own business, bumping around at 5 miles an hour off road, not worrying about a thing, to hearing and feeling the ground shake, looking behind us and seeing an elephant closing in on us so fast, and I remember not knowing what to do because I wasn’t in control of the car and it was actually happening so fast that I thought to myself, "I should jump out. We should jump out of this car, right?" Because I had seen the effects that elephants could have on cars. I had seen crushed vehicles before in this part of Tanzania.

Host: African elephants are the largest land mammals, and males can weigh anywhere between 4,000 and 14,000 pounds. Their trunks are basically pure muscle, and they can use them to push over trees or lift over 700 pounds.

Dr. Rae Wynn-Grant: And Joel, who had been through something like this before, shifted into second gear, and he started zigzagging the car, and the elephant got closer to us. And its trunk hit the car, and I remember I started screaming and crying and Joel was silent. He was dead silent and he tried to zigzag. But again, if you can imagine, we are completely off road and it’s bumpy and there’s this chance that we were gonna get stuck and the elephant was literally handling our car as we were zigzagging in the savannah as it was closing in on us.

Host: African elephants can reach speeds of 25 miles per hour, a tough speed to match when you’re driving fully off road. Experts often recommend zigzagging as a technique if you find yourself being chased by an elephant.

Whether on foot or in a car, the rationale behind this is that the elephant will need to slow down in order to change direction.

Dr. Rae Wynn-Grant: What ended up happening was the elephant was pushing our vehicle, it was knocking it, bumping it with its trunk, bumping it with its sides so that we would completely shake.

I was so close to this elephant, and it was terrifying. I thought to myself, not necessarily thinking that I was going to die for sure. I remember thinking more, "How am I going to survive? How am I going to survive if I’m in this vehicle when the elephant steps on top of it? Should I protect my neck? What do I do?"

This was a topless vehicle, right? It didn’t have a roof. I remember thinking, if it goes upside down, how do I protect my head? How do I do all of this? And within a few moments, the elephant stopped, let go of us. allowed us to keep going, but continued grunting, continued bluff charging, continued shaking its head, flapping its big ears.

Those are some of the signs that an elephant is feeling aggravated. Every so often, it would start, as we made a little bit more distance, it would start back up again, chasing us, but then stop, and chase us a little more, and stop. And truly, if that elephant had wanted to kill us, it would have. It absolutely had that ability to trample our vehicle, probably to pull us out, to fling us in the distance. That’s a story I don’t tell very often. I usually tell stories about venomous snakes or lions or bears. I’ve been chased by a bear, which was really frickin terrifying. I remember in the moment, it really felt like Jurassic Park.

It seemed exactly like that fear, that terror, that realization that being human didn’t matter in the face of humongous wild animals. It’s that reminder that I could study carnivores all day, predators all day, that are ferocious with the sharp teeth and the claws, but sometimes it’s those peaceful little herbivores that could actually get you.

Host: While Dr. Wynn-Grant has navigated close encounters with top predators in the wild, her view on the real dangers she faced might sound surprising. She offers an important perspective that goes beyond the obvious threats of the animal kingdom.

Dr. Rae Wynn-Grant: There are inherent dangers in my work, yes. A lot of the time, I find myself comparing it to other people’s careers.

So I think to myself, firefighters are in danger more frequently than I am. And probably police officers, maybe even social workers. I think there are so many urban occupations that people face danger on the regular, but they’re so accepted by society. Maybe they are heroes of society that we often don’t think of it that way.

So for me, we’re socialized to be very wary of the unknown, very wary of the outdoors. And by we, I mean, those of us who grew up in urban spaces. I often find that the places with the fewest people are the safest places, especially as a woman, especially as a black woman. I am very far away from violence most of the time that I’m working, and violence is one of the leading killers of human beings, especially Americans, especially black women in America. So I actually have an argument that my job is not very dangerous.

Host: The unsettling truth is that for many, it’s not nature’s wild creatures, but human prejudice and violence that pose the greatest threat. While 500 people die globally a year from elephants, in the U. S., 1,821 black women and girls were murdered in 2020, and black women are four times more likely to die by violence than white or Hispanic women. Dr. Wynn-Grant talks about both sides of this coin in her podcast, "Going Wild with Dr. Rae Wynn-Grant." When I started listening to Going Wild in preparation for our interview, I didn’t know what I expected. Probably something a little like Wild Kratts for adults. But instead what I found was a show that felt just as much about humanity as wild animals. In the first seasons, Dr. Wynn-Grant openly shared about her life, including stories about microaggressions and racism she experienced regularly as a black female scientist.

She talked about her divorce, parenting mistakes she’s made in the field, and yes, of course, her work with animals. I found myself drawn in by her storytelling and candor. The show is like a kind of Trojan horse. Come for stories about lemurs and lions, stay for the stories about navigating child care and menstruation in the jungle.

Dr. Rae Wynn-Grant: It’s been really an honor to be able to share my experiences and also tell, help to tell the stories of people for whom racism, sexism, homophobia, other social dynamics are a part of every single day, every single moment that they are being these heroes for the environment. And these aren’t just sad stories, right? They’re just stories. They’re just stories of my real life. And this is this amazing experience I had. And this is how racism played into it because racism or sexism or whatever -ism plays into every part of my identity and day and life. But they’re powerful stories and they’re resilient stories and they’re exciting stories and they’re inspiring stories.

I am just so freaking proud of this podcast and the way that we did it and the way that we pivoted away from just a kind of more sterile approach to talking about wild animals into something so inclusive.

Host: This episode of Out Alive was written and produced by me, Louisa Albanese, with editing by Maren Larson and Zoe Gates.

Scoring and sound design was by Jason Patton. The third season of Going Wild with Dr. Rae Wynn-Grant is out now and available wherever you get your podcasts. There’s a link in our show description and on our website. We’ll be back in two weeks with another survival story. Out Alive is made possible by the members of Outside Plus. Learn about all the benefits of membership outsideonline.com/podplus.

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