This is the heartwarming moment a rescue team helped an old obese elephant stand back up.
Female jumbo Phang Boonmee, 60, fell over on her side and was unable to stand back on her feet at a palm plantation in Krabi province, Thailand, on September 21.
As Phang Boonmee was at an advanced age and weighed a whopping three tonnes, Krabi subdistrict chief Mano Kruakaew dispatched wildlife officers to assist her.
Footage shows the team hoisting the jumbo upright with a backhoe after injecting her with a stimulant to help her regain strength.
They spent three hours trying to winch her in position, but she had trouble using her rear legs. The team took the entire night to shift Phang Boonmee onto a truck to be transported to the Southern Elephant Hospital in the Khlong Thom district.
Her owner, Somporn Prasert, 53, said: 'Phang Boonmee was raised in an elephant park in Phuket. Foreign tourists often fed her fruits, but she rarely had the chance to exercise because she was always kept in an enclosure. Her muscles had weakened from lack of exercise.
'I moved her to the plantation to help her adjust to her new environment in Krabi but she suddenly lied down on September 20 and could not stand back up.'
Somporn added that he called village officials as no vets were available due to the holiday.
As of 2023, there are an estimated 3,084-3,500 wild elephants in Thailand. The population has been increasing in recent years, but it is still a fraction of the estimated 300,000 wild elephants that lived in Thailand at the beginning of the 20th century. The main threats to wild elephants in Thailand are habitat loss and fragmentation, poaching, and conflict with humans.
The average lifespan for wild Asian elephants is around 60 years, reaching up to 80 in captivity.
