A video of a wild elephant in India smothering remains has puzzled untamed life specialists around the globe.
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.
He told the BBC that 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.
“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 by 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.”
