Having seen a lot of predator/prey video clips in YouTube and elsewhere, it’s pretty clear that many or most of the people on safari and doing the filming are in open vehicles, and are frequently right among all the attacking lions etc. Question is why do they never seem to get attacked by the lions. (I assume they wouldn’t be in these vehicles to begin with if there was any serious danger of attack.)
Because humans in vehicles aren’t considered prey to most predators. They are also at a significant distance (usually) and the predators are concentrating on the prey in front of them. They are not “right among” the lions, they are a good distance away with some big camera lenses.
And you do see animals charge and sometimes make contact with people on safari, but I’ve seen it happen more with elephants, hippos, and rhinos.
“Most”. That sounds like the type of thing there might be very dangerous exceptions to.
Sometimes they are and sometimes they’re not. I happened to see one just yesterday in which a prey animal being chased by some lions actually crashed into an open safari vehicle, with the lions in hot pursuit. And I’ve seen others as well.
it didn’t crash into.
it was trying to get in.
Even just walking around wouldn’t necessarily elicit an attack. Lions, Cheetahs, and Leopards hunt specific prey they know they can catch, at least some percentage of the time. If you were running around a lot that might stimulate their chase response… but we don’t look that much like an Antelope to them.
A couple of reasons, or maybe several.
- The animals in places where safaris are common are habituated to the presence of the vehicles.
- A lion can’t usually tell where the vehicle ends and the people begin. To a predator, a vehicle looks like a very large animal that smells like diesel fuel.
- Any good guide will tell his passengers to remain very still when big cats are nearby. Cats track movement.
There have been incidents where people have been attacked while on safari. Most of the time, it’s because of stupidity. On one safari, we were in a vehicle with probably 6-8 other people. We pulled up right up next to a pride of lions that were eyeballing a herd of cape buffalo. I was on the far side of the vehicle from the pride and saw a lone female on my side of the truck, lying in the grass. Suddenly, the idiot in front of me (complete with plastic safari hat and khaki outfit) jumps up to take a picture. When he jumped, the lion leaped to her feet, snarling. I hollered at the guy “For fuck’s sake, don’t move!” It was a tense moment and the guy was shaking by the time the lion lost interest and he was able to sit down. “Terribly sorry,” he says.
It’s interesting that while lions and other cats will tolerate the proximity of a truck full of smelly people, hippos, rhinos and cape buffalo will not, and may charge. Elephants too, particularly if there are young about.
Are accurate stats kept on safari attacks?
I have seen people on safaris get out of the vehicle to get a better camera shot, and get back in very VERY quickly, as soon as a leopard noticed that they were, prey-like, walking around. Animals ignore vehicles, and don’t even get off the road quickly when the horn is blown.
I don’t know if self-guided tours of African game parks are still allowed, but the guides are always armed, and would certainly not let anyone step out of the vehicle in the presence of any animals. In India, we were not allowed inside a national park at all, unless accompanied by a guide with an octagon-barreled rifle that looked like it hadn’t been fired since Moghul rule.
When I went on a walking safari some years ago, it began with a safety briefing: if a [something] starts charging, run away; if a [something] starts charging, run in zig-zags; if a [something] starts charging, climb a tree; if a [something] starts charging, play dead; if a [something] starts charging, make lots of noise… you get the picture: if anything charged us, we’d have no damned idea what to do.
I asked the guide when the last time was that something charged him. He laughed and said, “Hmmm, a while a ago.” When I asked what that meant, he said about 2 weeks.
So, yeah, people do get attacked, though I have no clue how frequently. But guides tend to know what to do to avoid antagonizing the animals… I think.
Guides have told me that animals don’t really have a mental concept of what a vehicle (or large tent) is, so assume it’s a potentially dangerous large animal to be treated warily.
Animals can and do attack people walking around, and while plenty of safari parks allow self-driving or offer walking safaris, it’s smart to know what you are doing.
What the safari industry doesn’t want you to know is that that’s actually just some guy in a lion suit.
So that’s why the guide suggested I feed the hippo a slice of pizza?
About mid-morning on one safari, I had to take a leak. The driver stopped in an open area, stood up, scanned with his binoculars, then remained standing when I stepped off the vehicle to take care of business. The only critters around were impalas, zebra and wildebeest. As the urine began to patter on the ground, I heard a noise behind me and turned my head to find an impala’s head poking around the back of the vehicle, looking at me. I guess he wondered who was marking territory, but it sure got my heart going for a moment there. 
People on safari aren’t (usually) attacked because guides generally are very familiar with animal behavior and know what can be done safely. As has been said, predators won’t normally recognize people inside a vehicle as prey.
Things can get sticky with elephants, which may regard the whole vehicle as a threat. I’ve had a minivan I was in chased by a couple of young males, and had a large male threaten the Land Cruiser we were in. Of course, we took off as quickly as possible.
I’ve done surveys on foot in forests in Gabon where forest elephants were very common. We were always on the lookout for them and would give them a very wide berth if we saw one in the forest. Once, though, I and my assistant were walking along a road when one virtually materialized out of the forest about 30 feet away. We dove into the shrubbery and hid until it moved away. One of the other members of my team unexpectedly came upon a mother with two young which charged him. Fortunately she got tangled up in some vines before she could reach him and he was able to get away.
Once I was traveling in Kenya with a couple of friends and we decided to camp at a designated campsite in Samburu National Park. We figured it must be safe since it was an official site. We started to look around and saw the river was swarming with Nile Crocodiles, so we decided not to take a dip. We looked around farther and saw big piles of elephant dung at the edge of the camp, so we decided not to walk too far from camp. We had dinner and went to bed. About an hour after dark a huge battle royal broke out between a pride of lions and a pack of hyenas about a hundred yards from our tents. (At least it sounded that way. We did not get out of our tents to go look.
How easily accessible are guns in safari places? Is it standard equipment for guides?
Yes, they almost always are armed with rifles.
I saw a video of a big cat who regularly jumped up on the hood of the safari truck to get a distant view of the plain, and was teaching that to her daughter; ignoring the people in the back of the truck.
When we were on (photo) safari in Kenya, the lions used the open top van we were in as cover to sneak up on wildebeasts. At one point we lost track of how many lions there were. I leaned out and snapped a photo of a lion crouched down by the tire of the van I was in. My wife and I were a little freaked out (in a good way), but our guides didn’t think much of it.
The only time they were kind of on guard was I got out of the van to take a leak, they told me not to get more than a couple of feet from the van.
When I was on safari, no one had a gun. Our guides had walking sticks. The camp was run by the Masai and they all seemed very comfortable in the bush.
Not on my safari. Have no idea about safaris in general.