From the archives: this story was last updated in March 2019.
Not everyone can say that they were rescued by an elephant, but this man in Thailand has the rare pleasure of touting such a claim.Some animals are more intelligent than others, and the elephant is known to be one of the smartest within the animal kingdom. These majestic creatures possess a wide range of emotions like love, happiness, anger, and sorrow.
Such feelings are evident when a baby is born and the females in the herd will trumpet loudly as if celebrating, or how a mother stands over her calf to protect it from the sun or from predators. And when a calf dies, researchers have observed the mother elephant going “through a period of despondency,” reported PBS. But more than that, scientists have now begun to recognize that elephants exhibit empathy, just like humans.
Compassion is normally not a feeling associated with an animal, but elephants have demonstrated this by helping one another and even coming to the aid of other species. According to PBS, an elephant went to great lengths to save a baby rhinoceros stuck in mud even though the mother rhino continually attacked her. So it should come as no surprise that an elephant would rescue a human who has been kind to it, which is exactly what 17-year-old Thongsri did for her caretaker.
At the sanctuary in Chiang Mai, Thailand, where Thongsri lives, she saw her caretaker getting “attacked” and quickly rushed over to help him. The gentle giant can be seen bending her knees to make sure he was not injured and stood nearby him.
The video of this encounter was uploaded to YouTube in March 2015 and has over 11 million views. Many online commenters were touched by the interaction they saw.
“The way the elephant got down on it’s [sic] knees to get closer to him out of concern is just wow!” wrote one poster.
“This almost made me cry. How heart warming [sic],” wrote another online commenter. “And to think of what humans have done to the elephant population.”
If a wild elephant can show concern and compassion for a person, shouldn’t humans also show the same for the wildlife sharing this planet with us?
Watch Thongsri come to the rescue in the video below:
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