Watch angry Elephant bull attacks tour guide car with tourists on board. A video of an elephant charging a safari vehicle has started doing the rounds on social media.

This is the moment terrified eco-students were forced to run for their lives after a six-ton s.e.x-crazed bull elephant charged their jeep while on a tour in South Africa. Trainee guides were being driven through Selati Game Reserve on the edge of the Kruger National Park in South Africa on Sunday when they were charged by a bull elephant in ‘musth’ – a state of s.e.xual aggression that occurs during mating season.

Video captured the moment their open-topped car was being driven down a narrow dirt road when the bull charged out of the undergrowth, trumpeting and pawing the ground before smashing into the side of the vehicle and lifting it off the road.

More footage captured from the car behind by EcoTraining guides reveals how the car was turned sideways by 13ft elephant – sending three female students running for their lives.

Images taken of the vehicle after the attack shows how the elephant’s tusks had punched through the metal bodywork and shredded it with ease, crumpling the side of the vehicle and leaving the front passenger seat bent and broken.

The terrified trainees were taken back to the safari lodge where they were given counselling for the shock, but were otherwise unharmed.

Staff had to abandon the vehicle and only went back to retrieve it later after the elephant herd had moved away.

It is thought the elephant which attacked was the breeding male of the herd and became enraged when the trucks veered too close to his females.

When bull elephants are ready to breed they enter a state of sexual aggression called musth where testosterone levels in their bodies can multiply by up to sixty times.

This also causes them to become territorial, aggressive and can provoke acts of extreme violence – both aimed at rivals and anyone else unfortunate enough to cross their paths.

Captive elephants which enter musth have been known to turn on their keepers and kill them, while wild elephants that wander into villages while in the charged state are thought to trample around 500 people a year.

The students were taking part in a course at EcoTraining, a South African school that teaches tour guides and ‘nature guardians’.

EcoTraining is based at the 18,000 acre Selati Game Reserve which is home to 135 elephants as well as black and white rhinos and lions, leopard and cheetah.

Here is how the car looked afterwards