After two days of being trapped in a muddy pit, six baby elephants – aged between one and four years old – are finally safe with their parents, all thanks to the hard work and dedication of park rangers in Thailand.
According to reports, patrolling rangers stumbled upon this struggling herd of calves in Thap Lan National Park, east of Bangkok on Wednesday afternoon.
They quickly realised that the calves could not climb out of the dirty watering hole. A smaller team then left the forest to bring back digging tools while others stayed overnight to keep watch over the frightened creatures.
Watch video on the operation to save the calves:
What happened?
“Our team arrived with hoes (on Thursday morning) … and we began to dig around the rim (of the mud pit) to make it less steep,” said a ranger.
After hours of digging to build a makeshift ramp, the mud-covered babies managed to stumble out of the pit one-by-one as the rangers cheered them on.
“Go, go, follow each other!” the rangers yelled in a video recorded by the national parks department. “Go, children, go!”
The rangers had observed a herd of 30 adult elephants nearby and believed the young calves must have been separated from them.
