Wild Asian elephant herd napping among the reeds in Yunnan Province Photo:Forest fire-safety branch of the Puer city

Fire-safety monitoring experts in Puer city, Southwest China's Yunnan Province, have released footage of a wild Asian elephant herd napping among the reeds. 

A total of 10 wild Asian elephants can be seen in the video. Three elephant mothers sit in a circle around four of the tiniest baby elephants of the group as three other larger elephants also sleep nearby.

The tiniest babies in the herd are only about 8 months old, while the bigger ones are 1 to 3 years old, Guo Yuanfeng, a local wild Asian elephant monitoring expert, told the Global Times. 

The few hours of sleeps may have rejuvenated the elephant herd's energies as around noon, the three elephant mothers appear to urge their babies to wake up and then head into a nearby cornfield for lunch. 

Guo said that footage of this many wild Asian elephants gathering together is rare. He also stressed that monitoring the animal herd can help experts issue safety warnings about the animal's presence to local villagers. 

He also noted that any damage the herd caused to the villagers' cornfield would be compensated by local government subsidies. 

Due to international events like COP15 held in Montreal, Canada, the public has developed an increased interest in biodiversity protection and China's constant pursuit of promoting human-animal co-existence. 

Wang Xuejun, a biodiversity protection expert in Dali, told the Global Times that due to almost 30 years of rescue and protection efforts, the number of wild Asian elephants in China had increased to 360 by the end of 2021. 

"In future, there will be more scientific conservation methods, such as digital monitoring, that will be used to protect this flagship species of Yunnan Province."