Elephant Returns Child's Shoe After It Falls Into Zoo Enclosure in Moment of Pure Sweetness

Elephants are exceedingly intelligent animals. They can understand the differences between various human languages, have excellent long-term memories, can use tools and make art, and are empathetic creatures, who provide each other comfort and even mourn their dead. They are used all over the world as working animals and beasts of burden, toiling alongside humans in captivity.

So is it any wonder when one wants to lend a hand—or in this case, a trunk?

In this video, an Asian elephant in a zoo or park enclosure is seen picking up a shoe that has been dropped into his enclosure and handing it back to the children on the platform. The video appears to have been taken somewhere in Asia, and it is unclear how the shoe managed to make it into the enclosure.

Related: Elephant Spots a Fellow Animal Drowning and Immediately Alerts Humans for Help

Nevertheless, the elephant is no fool, and picks it up in its trunk before reaching out and handing it back to the kids, who seem to respond by giving the elephant a treat. It’s possible this is a standard procedure at whatever this zoo is, as the platform the kids are on is obviously near enough for the creature to reach them from its enclosure.

Elephants in Captivity

I’m old enough to remember elephant shows at circuses, and riding on elephants at carnivals and festivals. Such activities are far more rare in the United States nowadays, due to ethical concerns about the animals’ treatment. Elephants have not performed in traveling circuses for the better part of a decade, and many smaller zoos have even surrendered their elephants due to not having enough space in their enclosures for the massive animals to remain healthy.

But for tens of thousands of working elephants all over the world, especially in southern and Southeast Asia, a life spent working—whether through performances or as beasts of burden—is an ongoing fact of life, and has been for over four thousand years. Though elephants have never been domesticated, they have worked alongside humans for nearly all of recorded history.

In some rural, monsoon jungles in South Asia, they are still a major source of both transportation and labor, particularly in the logging industry. Few elephants are ever born in captivity, and so the captive population is almost entirely formed from baby elephants who have been captured from wild herds, and subjugated to the needs of their trainers, commonly called mahouts.

Obviously, the practices followed by elephant trainers and the way these elephants are treated can vary enormously. For many animals, it is a good relationship. For others, it is a nightmare.

The Elephant and the Shoe

This elephant, a twenty-five year old Asian elephant female, is a resident of a zoo in Weihai, a city in Shandong China, and the shoe incident appears to have occurred back in 2022. However, the way the enclosure is built, it is very easy for elephants and visitors to interact with each other for visitors to feed the elephants hay and other treats in return for tricks and interesting behaviors. In this way, it’s set up more like a petting zoo would be in the United States.

In other words, don’t try this at a zoo here. You throw your shoe in an animal’s enclosure, you’ll get kicked out, not a head pat from an elephant’s trunk.

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