When Diana Tilden-Davis, winner of Miss South Africa 1991, was paddling a canoe in Botswana four years ago she was attacked by a hippo which nearly bit off her leg. According to her husband, who helped Mrs Tilden-Davis run a safari company in the area, hippos were behaving aggressively at the time because the region had been hit by a serious drought and food was scarce.

Two weeks before Mrs Tilden-Davis was attacked another woman, who was on her honeymoon, was killed by a hippo on the same stretch of water.