An elephant att.a.cked a huge sculpture at a wildlife park after mistaking it for a love rival.
The male elephant was filmed foraging for food near the tourist center in Khao Yai National Park, Thailand.
A bull was browsing when he discovered a giant sculpture of an elephant and felt perplexed by its resemblance.
The elephant approaches the inanimate object and smashes it on its side after seeing it for a few seconds.
Thinking he had vanquished the artwork, the elephant saunters away proudly towards the forest, with park rangers watching from a distance.
Ple Srichai, a park ranger at the Angkor Wat National Park, said the bull is likely to have mistaken the sculpture for another male that was threatening his breeding rights.
‘I thought it was amusing how the wild elephant was attempting to attack the statue. Male elephants frequently compete for females, thus perhaps he assumed it was a genuine animal that required demonstrating his dominance over.’
There were bystanders who witnessed and screamed as the male jumbo destroyed the sculpture. The cops took away the marble after the elephant had gone.
No one was in.jur.ed in the incident, and police decided that they should move the thing to another area of the park to avoid a repeat occurrence.
Male Asian elephants are solitary by nature, and they only join herds to breed. In contrast, male African elephants remain a member of their herd for the rest of their lives.
An estimated 2,000 elephants are living in the wild in Thailand where they live in sanctuaries or zoos.
