This is the touching moment a rescued elephant is welcomed by a herd at a sanctuary in Thailand. Completely blind, the 30-year-old elephant was rescued from a circus and brought at the Elephant Nature Park in Chiang Mai where is about to met her new herd for the very first time. The moving scene was captured on camera!
Before being rescued by the volunteers at the Save Elephant Foundation, Ploy Thong had a very sad life. The gentle creature was forced to carry people on her back on the streets of Thailand for over 16 years. Before that, she was part of a circus. But once she arrived at this elephant sanctuary, things were about to change forever. Soon after her arrival, Chiang Mai started to send low vibrations out, to let the herd know about her arrival. But it didn’t took too long until the herd rushed to greet and welcome their new member in a very emotional scene.
“Both eyes blind, she transported tourists every day,” staff from the Save Elephant Foundation said. “Every day she was saddled early, and carried riders until the sun set. She used her trunk to sniff the way while the tourist rode on her back. [But] her journey to freedom begins.”
And what a lovely way to start her new journey. They way the herd hurried to welcome her shows just how sensitive these creatures are. From the first moment at the sanctuary, Chiang Mai learned that she will be loved and protected for the rest of her days.
Watch the heartwarming moment, here:
“Elephants are well-known for their intelligence, close family ties and social complexity, and they remember for years other individuals and places,” an article on Elephant Voices website reads. “They live in a fluid fission-fusion society with relationships radiating out from the mother-offspring bond through families, bond groups, clans, independent males and beyond to strangers.”
