ANIMAL INSTINCT

We speak with leading luxury operators to find out how coming face to face with wildlife can be a transformative experience that brings us closer to ourselves

- Coco Marett

Much like the overview effect—an intense emotional sensation felt by astronauts when they see Earth from space for the first time—there’s something about experiencing a safari that seems to create a shift in the way people view and think about our planet and life itself.

“There’s a theory on this that I’ll borrow,” says Peter Allison, an Australian author who has documented his time as one of Africa’s top safari guides in cheekily titled books such as Whatever You Do, Don’t Run: True Tales of a Botswana Safari Guide and Don’t Look Behind You: A Safari Guide’s Encounters with Ravenous Lions, Stampeding Elephants, and Lovesick Rhinos. “As humans evolved in Africa, some part of us feels at home once we are surrounded by the sounds and smells our ancestors lived with for thousands of years. It’s something I would have sneered at as a younger cynic, but I’ve seen it affect so many people and felt it myself.”

Allison is now the founder of Natural Selection, a safari operator that specialises in ethical experiences and luxury camps in Namibia and Botswana. “Some of my favourite memories during my time as a guide are of getting to know animals long term, like a family of cheetahs I spent countless hours with and watched grow to maturity and independence,” Allison recalls. “But for exhilaration, nothing matches the clash between two groups of male lions after one group had been caught with the others’ girlfriend. The speed, sound and fury were unlike anything I’ve witnessed. On the other side of the emotional scale, I had the absolute privilege of watching an elephant give birth, and see the baby take its first steps and even first swim—all within a two-hour period.”

There’s a lot that humans can learn from observing the natural world.