This was filmed in a wilderness area of the Greater Kruger National Park, South Africa. We came across this unusual sighting where a good few Elephants of a herd were actually lying flat on their sides sleeping. With Elephants being the largest land mammals on the planet, many people on Safari always want to know how Elephants sleep and if they sleep at all. On average they only sleep around 2 hours out of 24 with the reason being that they have to feed 90% of the time. Majority of the time Elephants stand and sleep or lean against a tree or one another for short periods. In captivity like Zoos, they actually do go lay down and sleep but in the wild it’s very seldom seen. The reason for this is that they are extremely vulnerable when lying down like that, especially with many big predators roaming these wild areas. Getting back onto their feet is not quick and can become an easy target for predators. One can clearly see that the ones lying down are surrounded by others standing. In this way there are always some individuals watching out for those sleeping. All of this sleeping only lasted for half an hour before the herd started moving on again