A herd of elephants was captured taking a nap in these stunning drone images.
Aerial video shows the Jumbo family sleeping on their sides in a tight-knit circle in the bushes in the Tamil Nadu forest in India on May 14.
The brown bodies of the five elephants stand out against the dark green bushes in the images. The three cubs, one of them newborn, rested behind the adults in the Anamalai Tiger Reserve, 370 square miles of rainforest.
The animals, which sleep remarkably similar to each other in the tall grass, with their trunks tucked under their chins and legs crossed, vary in size.
The largest appears to be a full-grown adult, while the other three slightly smaller elephants also in the group are all teenagers.
A herd of elephants was captured taking a nap in these stunning drone images.
Aerial video shows the Jumbo family sleeping on their sides in a tight-knit circle in the bushes in the Tamil Nadu forest in India on May 14.
The animals, which sleep in a remarkably similar manner in the tall grass, with their trunks tucked under their chins and legs crossed, vary in size. They appear to have formed a protective ring around a baby elephant that can be seen huddled in the middle of the herd.
One of the medium-sized animals appears to be standing.
In the center of the herd is an adorable baby elephant, who looks restless in the images, with his small ears moving from side to side.
He seems to be protected by the others who lie in a circle around him.
Supriya Sahu, a wildlife officer at the Tamil Nadu Forest Department, said: ‘Watch how the family provides first-class security to the baby elephant.
‘Also how the young elephant checks the presence of other family members to calm down. He is very similar to our own families.’
This is not the first time elephants have been caught napping in this way.
In 2021, a herd of elephants made famous in China stopped for a well-deserved rest after traveling 300 miles across the country. They were also seen sleeping in a circle around their young, curled up against each other in the tall grass.
The group of 15 animals had escaped from their nature reserve and were tracked as they wandered towards the city of Kunming in Yunnan province.
During their epic journey, the elephants were captured at night trotting through urban streets by security cameras, filmed from the air by more than a dozen drones and followed by those seeking to minimize damage and keep people and elephants safe. .
But the wild animals caused chaos by walking through urban streets and sticking their trunks through residential windows in Kunming.
This was despite officials’ efforts to divert them from residential areas.
In 2021, a herd of elephants made famous in China stopped for a well-deserved rest after traveling 300 miles across the country. Like Indian elephants, they were also seen sleeping in a circle around their young, curled up against each other in the tall grass.
The group of 15 animals had escaped from their nature reserve and were tracked as they wandered towards the city of Kunming, in China’s Yunnan province.
Although the elephants caused some chaos for locals in their path, the herd became a viral sensation in China at a time when most of the country was under Covid-19 lockdown.
Videos of them jogging through empty streets delighted many, offering a vision of freedom that was not available to many people at the time.
Asian elephants have been listed as endangered since 1986, and the wild population is estimated to have declined by 50 percent since the 1930s and 1940s.
An estimated 27,000 to 31,000 elephants in India are threatened by habitat loss, environmental degradation and habitat fragmentation.