Wild Elephant Invading a Backyard Looking for Food Sees Plastic Litter Lying Around. It Instantly Cleans Them Up
Picture this. A group of visitors are strolling through the reserves of a national park, witnessing a menagerie of wild animals, sprawled in bushy thickets, enjoying their day. Suddenly one visitor takes a long gulp, clenches the can of orange soda in their fist, and tosses it on a patch of the reserve that animals call their home. A few minutes later, a kiddo walks in and flings around an empty packet of potato chips outside their safari lodge. By the time dusk sets in, certain patches of the park are littered with scraps like these. These scraps eventually end up spoiling the home environment of innocent animals with their rotting smells and poisonous plastics.
Sadly, this scenario happens every day at South Africa’s Kruger National Park where almost 950,000 people visit each year. While humans have been incapable of cleaning up this litter, a heroic elephant has taken the responsibility. In a viral footage shared by @CatersClips on YouTube, an elephant is seen tidying up a resident's trash spilled around in the backyard, one plastic can at a time. The footage was captured by Russell Owen MacLaughlin, a photographer based in the South African town of Hoedspruit, according to the video description.
MacLaughlin had set up CCTV cameras in this area of the park to study how wild animals behaved and lived there. The eye-opening footage opens with this grey-brown elephant munching on leaves from a tree. Standing in a savanna with tufts of grass padding the ground, the elephant is blissfully immersed in ripping greens from a tree and chewing them in his mouth. Suddenly, his attention falls on the grassy floor. While flapping his giant ears, he plods forward to monitor something lying below. Turns out that he had spotted some dumped food cans scattered on the grass, right in front of a grey-roofed cottage.
After making a beeline towards the cans, he scoops them up with his trunk, gently using his leg to hold it tighter. He then curls his trunk, folding a can inside. He then dumps the can in a black garbage bin placed in front of the cottage. He repeats the same process with another can, and coolly plods away, depicting a prestige that no human could ever match. If all the humans who visited the Kruger national park were to display this attitude, the park would be spick and span in no time.
The grit and guts of this elephant made the footage a viral sensation on the internet, even making its way to a Reddit post upvoted by thousands of people. “Elephants are smarter than people that litter,” u/raphasauer declared in a comment to the video. u/RabidLeroy said this is proof why “elephants are as intelligent as ever.” u/insanegodcuthulu reflected, “What on earth did we ever do to deserve elephants.” Others called out to all the “litter bugs” who dumped these cans in the park. “Crazy how an animal who lacks reasoning and understanding can do this and yet some humans are too stupid to do it,” wrote u/pugmommy4life420. The gist, humans have a lot to learn from animals.