Here's a great page with a bunch of clips of Tippi playing with animals: http://spluch.blogspot.com/2007/10/girl-from-namibia-who-has-special-bond.html

Gonna show some to my nephew, 12yrs old and he screams like a little girl when he sees a garden snake.

Wanna bet her parents were in fact French filmmakers who happened to spend 10 yrs in Africa looking for great wildlife footage.. (what better footage than yoour daugther riding elephant) I wonder how much of this is akin to Croc Hunter and his rugrat.

lol.. I must be psychic...

daughter of Alain Degré and Sylvie Robert, a couple who chose to relinquish their lives in France for the freedom of nature in Southern Africa – was born in the newly independent Namibia. Her parents worked as freelance wildlife photographers and film makers.

Well, it depends on what you call a zoo or a refuge. I have family who lived in Africa for quite a while, in Kenya. In fact, the only Kenyans I have met would have said there are no wild animals in kenya at all--they are all in zoos--so your point holds, but still I think there are room for my points. My cousins knew many, many people who had what we think of as wild animals as ...well, not quite pets, but highly social neighbors. For instance, one friend had a lion who lived in the bush and roamed free, but who expected to come in at night and lie on the couch and watch TV with the old female human who left the door open for him. Africa is not North America, and a lot of things just don't fit our expectations. There are people living lifestyles that are not ancient and are not modern.

I didn't see any claim that would have been something to "fall for" in Tippi's story. Her association with the animals is no less interesting because she was not the first human to associate with them (especially elephants, which can be working animals). If we had some kid here who wandered through a wild animal park, it would be worth noting. People make movies about kids who do all sorts of interesting things: play piano early (yet ultimately no better as adults than people who learned much later), love garbage trucks, repair vacuums, and, of course, lived in odd places. It may not be to her credit, or even her parents' credit that she had an interesting early life, but that doesn't make the story about her disingenuous.

IMO.

*africa

Adding video to channels (Africa) - requested by longde.