Six baby elephants separated from their parents and trapped in a muddy pit for days, have been rescued by park rangers in rural Thailand, officials said Saturday.
Patrolling rangers chanced upon the struggling herd in a national park east of Bangkok on Wednesday afternoon, March 27th, park superintendent Prawatsart Chantheap told AFP.
Once the rangers realised the calves, aged between one and four years old, could not climb out of the dirty watering hole, some left the forest to bring back digging tools, while others stayed overnight to keep watch over the frightened creatures.
"Our team arrived with hoes (on Thursday morning)... and we began to dig around the rim (of the mud pit) to make it less steep," he said.
After three hours of digging to build a makeshift ramp, the mud-covered babies managed to stumble out of the pit one-by-one as the rangers cheered them on.