Traffic halted in Thailand when herd of 50 elephants take over the street
There are some animals that are hard to stop for on the road. Unfortunately, tiny wild mice and rabbits can easily be missed by a vehicle’s headlights, and it’s down to the animals themselves to make sure they stay out of harm’s way.
One animal that would certainly never have this issue is the elephant. If you couldn’t spot a 5-ton mammal taking up the entire road space, you would probably need to get your eyes tested pretty fast.
Of course, elephants on roads aren’t the sort of thing you see on an everyday basis. But in some countries, it’s possible for elephants to occasionally emerge from the wild and show their presence from time to time.
This is exactly what happened just a few days ago, when a herd of 50 elephants broke out of the jungle and casually crossed a road in Thailand, much to the delight of onlookers.
In this case, rangers had tracked the elephants’ movement and realised where they were headed – and so police sensibly decided to close the road off to the public. Because, let’s face it, if an elephant wants to cross a road, it’s going to cross a road. Us humans don’t really get a say.
The situation was bizarrely calm and orderly. The elephants made their appearance, the onlookers snapped photos on their cameras, and that was that.
In Thailand, there is a lot of respect for elephants and other native animals that can be found roaming in the wild. Pratya Chutipat Sakul, an onlooker who had filmed the occurrence from a distance, said:
“Nobody minds waiting for the elephants, as the most important thing is that they’re safe. The elephants were all so calm and barely noticed the humans. I feel very lucky to have seen such an amazing sight.”
This herd of 50 elephants is relatively large compared to a normal herd size. Generally, elephant families can expand up to 20, so it’s likely that several families had joined together to form a larger clan to make this journey. Perhaps they were thinking about strength in numbers – though even one elephant would have the power to draw traffic to a standstill!
It’s easy to spot an elephant clan by observing the behaviour of the different members of each herd when they interact with one another. Zoologists probably would have enjoyed checking out the herd crossing the road if there had been any time for study!
Nobody will know for sure why these elephants decided to make an appearance in this particular area of Thailand, but it’s likely that quarantine has something to do with it.
With fewer people out on the road; malls, restaurants and other non-essential services closed; and orders to only travel when necessary, the Thai wildlife probably thinks it has free reign over the whole country by now.
We’ve seen examples of this all over the world, too – sheep roaming the streets in Wales, pigs claiming back the land in Italy, and even a puma just hanging out in the centre of the Chilean capital Santiago. If anyone’s loving this lack of human intervention, it’s the animals.
If it means getting to spot cool sightings of wildlife every now and again, we’re not complaining! You can check out the incredible footage of the elephant herd crossing the road in the video below.
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