Elephants are extremely intelligent animals. They can understand the differences between various human languages, have excellent long-term memories, can use tools and make art, and are empathetic creatures, providing comfort to one another and even mourning their dead. They are used around the world as working and pack animals, working alongside humans in captivity.
So is it any wonder when someone wants to lend a hand – or in this case, a chest?
In this video, an Asian elephant in a zoo or park is seen picking up a shoe that fell into its enclosure and returning it to children on the platform. The video appears to have been taken somewhere in Asia and it is unclear how the shoe managed to get into the room.
Related: Elephant Spots a Drowning Animal and Immediately Alerts Humans for Help
Still, the elephant is no fool and picks it up in its trunk before reaching out and handing it back to the children, who seem to respond by giving the elephant a treat. It’s possible that this is standard procedure in whatever zoo it is, as the platform the children are on is obviously close enough for the creature to reach them from its enclosure.
Elephants in captivity
I’m old enough to remember elephant shows in circuses and riding elephants at carnivals and festivals. Such activities are much rarer in the United States today, due to ethical concerns about the treatment of animals. Elephants have not performed in traveling circuses for nearly a decade, and many smaller zoos have even surrendered their elephants because they did not have enough space in their enclosures for the huge animals to remain healthy.
But for tens of thousands of working elephants around the world, especially in South and Southeast Asia, a life spent working – whether through performance or as pack animals – is a constant fact of life, and has been that way for more than four thousand years. Although elephants were never domesticated, they have worked alongside humans for almost all of recorded history.
In some rural monsoon forests in South Asia, they are still an important source of transport and labor, particularly in the timber industry. Few elephants are born in captivity and therefore the captive population is almost entirely made up of baby elephants that have been captured in wild herds and subjugated to the needs of their trainers, commonly called mahouts.
Obviously, the practices followed by elephant trainers and the way elephants are treated can vary enormously. For many animals, it’s a good relationship. For others, it is a nightmare.
The Elephant and the Shoe
This elephant, a 25-year-old female Asian elephant, is a resident of a zoo in Weihai, a city in Shandong, China, and the shoe incident appears to have occurred in 2022. However, the way the cabinet is constructed, it is very easy for elephants and visitors to interact with each other so visitors feed the elephants hay and other treats in exchange for interesting tricks and behaviors. In this way, it is set up more like a zoo in the United States.
In other words, don’t try this in a zoo here. If you throw your shoe into an animal’s enclosure, you will be kicked out, not a pat on the head from an elephant’s trunk.
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