A bizarre video showing an Asian elephant smoking has gone viral. The video, showing a wild elephant “ingesting” charcoal and “blowing out ashes” has been posted on YouTube by Wildlife Conservation Society. According to the researchers who shot the unusual video- Vinay Kumar, assistant director, WCS India and Srinath Rao, the female elephant’s behaviour is something that the duo “had never witnessed before, and it has probably not been commonly captured on film earlier either”.
“As cameras clicked, I switched on to the video mode and filmed what would be an amazing sight to behold, and a behaviour that has had experts trying to decipher the exact nature of the action,” Kumar wrote on the WCS page as he described the rare experience.
According to Kumar, what the duo saw that day almost appeared as though the elephant was smoking. “She would draw up a trunk full of ash close to her mouth and blow it out in a puff of smoke! I quizzed my colleague and elephant biologist, Dr Varun R Goswami, on what was going on. In all likelihood,
he concluded, the elephant was trying to eat wood charcoal. That made sense as the elephant appeared to be picking up something from the burnt forest floor, blowing away the ash that came along with it in her trunk, and consuming the rest,” he said. According to Kumar, “charcoal has well recognised toxin-binding properties, and although it may not have much nutritional content, wild animals may be attracted to it for this medicinal value”. “Charcoal can also serve as a laxative, thereby doubling its utility for animals that consume it after forest fires, lightning strikes, or controlled burns of the type we saw in Nagarahole that day,” he said in his post on the website.
( News Source : timesnownews.com )