Moment an elephant teetered on two legs to reach tasty treat from the tree branch

Standing on two legs, this elephant shows that he aims high when getting a good meal.

The animal was undeterred when it had to pluck some delicious fruit from the branch of a particularly tall tree.

Instead of simply shaking the trunk and catching the meal as it fell, he reached out to his full height to elegantly pluck it from the branch.

This 40-year-old male elephant is thought to be the only one in his herd that has learned to do an extraordinary stunt.

The rare sight was captured on camera by photographer Etienne Oosthuizen, the Old Mondoro Bushcamp manager in Lower Zambezi National Park, Zambia.

The 28-year-old Zimbabwean man first discovered the elephant’s impressive talent while leading a hunt with a group of tourists at the camp.

After observing the elephant for an hour, they were shocked to see the animal stand up on his hind legs five times to reach the top of most parts of the tree.

Mr. Oosthuizen said: ‘The vegetation is mainly tall trees and short grass bushes. Most of these trees in our area have bark on them, and the elephants mainly shake the trees to get these fruits.

‘But this particular elephant stands up to pull the whole tree down to get the eaves and bark, so not much goes to waste.

‘There is also a group of younger elephants that follow this guy around to get whatever he can leave behind, they are still young or small to have access to the pods.

‘As far as I know, he’s the only elephant in our area that can do this. From my observations, it seems he learned that from somewhere.

‘This behavior has actually never been captured with a photograph.’ He added: ‘People are surprised to see this, but they must have seen this years ago in reality.

‘Someone must have seen it in the wild to be able to train these animals to do this in the circus.’

African elephants can grow up to 13 feet tall and weigh more than six tons.

These animals have four molars, each weighing 11 lbs and about 12 inches long.

Their tusks are the teeth that elephants use to get food, like roots and bark.

The average tusks weigh up to 100 lbs and can grow up to 8 feet long.

An elephant’s trunk has no bone or cartilage but contains 100,000 units of muscle, which gives the animal incredible dexterity and allows it to pick up tiny objects.