Vets pulled off a dramatic rescue of an elephant in Thailand from a manhole cover.
The baby elephant has been rescued in central Thailand after its mother was sedated to allow the operation as the baby elephant fell into the drainage reservoir on the outskirts of the Royal Hills golf course in Nakhon Nayok province in the early hours of Wednesday morning.
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His distressed mother, believed to belong to a herd of elephants travelling in the nearby jungle, stayed with the child because the baby couldn’t get out of the steep pit and the mother stood guard over her calf.
When wildlife volunteers tranquilised the older elephant she hit her head on the edge of the concrete structure, knocking her unconscious, and she also fell in and the pair were discovered by a passing resident, who quickly alerted wildlife officials and Khao Yai National Park authorities to the mammal’s plight.
Would-be rescuers were initially unable to help the baby elephant due to the presence of its worried mother, and were forced to tranquilise the older creature and a truck-mounted cherry picker crane was used to pull the mother out before vets climbed on top of her to perform CPR.
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Unfortunately, the mother elephant then partially fell into the hole before being extracted using a digger and later recaptured and the digger cleared away earth so the calf could climb out of the 7ft-deep hole.
It took the team more than three hours to finish the operation and the baby was eventually rescued from the pit and reunited with its mother, with park authorities confirming the pair had safely returned to the jungle.
