Herd of Migrating Elephants Make Their Way Through Town in China at Night After Locals Clear Path for Them

You don’t usually think of elephants as being sneaky — because they’re kind of hard to miss. But a herd of Asian elephants is proving that theory wrong. The giant beasts were spotted on surveillance cameras, sneaking across a town in China.

The 15 pachyderms are from a nature preserve in Yunnan province. They’ve been migrating north since December 2020, and sometimes the shortest distance between two points is through human-populated areas.

The elephants took advantage of the cover of night to make their way across roads and through the town.

People did know they were coming — again, they’re elephants — and blocked off the streets with cars to clear a path for them.

Those cars were about the same size as the elephants, as Asian elephants can grow to 21-feet long and weigh as much as 11,000 pounds. They’re also endangered.  According to the World Wildlife Federation, there are fewer than 50,000 of them in the wild.

By dawn, these 15 had made themselves scarce. They split town, continuing on their way northward.

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