WILD AND WEIRD: Elephant Caught Smoking Charcoal Leaves Top Scientists Wondering How

A wild elephant in India caught on camera blowing out plumes of smoke while consuming smouldering lumps of charcoal has left the untamed life specialists around the globe wondering.

Vinay Kumar, a researcher having a place with the Wildlife Conservation Society (India), shot the 48-second video during a work outing to Nagarhole backwoods in Karnataka state in April 2016.

In the video, the mammal can been seen picking up lumps of charcoal with its trunk, placing the coal in its mouth, and exhaling a large cloud of smoke.

Speaking to BBC on the strange event, Vinay said he had not discharged the video up to this point since he didn’t “exactly understand its significance”.

Researchers state they are as yet not satisfactory why the elephant was blowing cinders.

Wild Elephant Blows Smoke in Unusual Video | Nat Geo Wild

“This is the principal known video-documentation of a wild elephant showing such conduct, and this has researchers had specialists bewildered,” an announcement gave by Wildlife Conservation Society (India) said.

Mr Kumar said he and his group were visiting the woodland promptly toward the beginning of the day to screen camera traps set up to catch pictures of tigers.

He recognized the female elephant scarcely 50m (164ft) away and started recording with his simple to use camera.

The elephant “seems to ingest charcoal” left by a controlled fire on the ground and “victory the remains”, as indicated b

y the announcement.

“What we saw that day nearly seemed like the elephant was smoking – she would draw up a trunk brimming with debris near her mouth and blow it out in a puff of smoke!” Mr Kumar said.

Elephant scholar Varun R

Goswami, who has inspected the video, accepts that “most likely, the elephant was attempting to ingest wood charcoal, as she had all the earmarks of being getting something from the consumed woodland floor, overwhelming the debris that joined it in her trunk, and devouring the rest”.

“Charcoal has all around perceived poison restricting properties, and in spite of the fact that it might not have a lot of nourishing substance, wild creatures might be pulled in to it for this restorative worth,” he said.

“Charcoal can likewise fill in as a purgative, in this way multiplying its utility for creatures that expend it after woods fires, lighting strikes, or controlled consumes.”

“I believe the elephant may have been trying to ingest wood charcoal,” said Dr Varun Goswami, WCS India scientist and elephant biologist.

“She appeared to be picking up pieces from the forest floor, blowing away the ash that came along with it, and consuming the rest.”

Charcoal has toxin-binding properties, which scientists believe may be of some medicinal value to elephants.

The charred lumps of wood can also serve as a laxative to the pachyderms who are able to consume it in the wild after forest fires and lightning strikes.

Nagahrole National Park in the south east of India is home to threatened species including Asian elephants, Indian bison and tigers.

WCS researchers had been visiting the park as part of a long-term project to study tigers and their prey.