I came upon this elephant about 100m down from a lioness on a giraffe kill. The kill was a day or two old and she was just getting scraps. Not sure why the hyenas had not found it yet, there was plenty for hyenas but lions not so much. Anyway, the elephant looked somehow so short and I was nonplussed for a moment as we saw him through the bushes. I moved for a closer and better view and realized what was happening.  The kill was in a dry river bed and a common strategy for lions is to chase giraffes into broken ground and over a small cliff od steep bank. The giraffe usually loses footing and falls and then its curtains for the giraffe. 

So the elephant had his eye on the lone lioness and yet he was more than knee deep in the soft river sand. He was digging a hole or actually at this point had already dug a pretty deep hole. Probably over a meter deep and had struck water under the dry riverbed. This is how elephants get water in the dry season often times. So they dig a hole in the soft sand and tap into the water below the surface. They drink slowly cuz the sweet water has to filter through the sand and fill the hole. They drink that and then wait again for the hole to fill. Once the elephant has drunk his fill then he will leave, but the same hole fills with water and many other animals benefit from the same waterhole that the elephant dug. So the elephant actually creates a waterhole for everyone else. Nature is truly wonderful.