New Delhi: A bizarre video of an elephant caught 'smoking' has baffled the wildlife experts, who reveal that they have never seen anything like this before.


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The “smoking” elephant video, which has spread like wildfire was shot by a Wildlife Conservation Society (India) scientist when he and his team were visiting the forest for a project on long-term monitoring of tiger and prey populations.


Check out the video here:



Sharing the video on Youtube, WCS India program wrote, "We are excited to share with you a rare video shot by Mr Vinay Kumar, Assistant Director at WCS India, which captures a wild Asian Elephant exhibiting incredibly unusual behaviour – seemingly ingesting charcoal and blowing out the ashes! The video was taken while he, his colleague Mr Srikanth Rao and our field staff were checking in on our installed camera-traps in the park as a part of WCS India’s long-term monitoring of tiger and prey populations in Nagarahole National Park, Karnataka.


In the 48-second video, the elephant can be seen picking up something from the floor, ingesting it and puffing out smoke. 


Vinay Kumar in his blog wrote, "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."


Kumar concluded that the sight of the jumbo puffing away had startled him and his team.