Photo: Sina Weibo

A herd of wild Asian elephants had a nice little stroll on an expressway in Southwest China’s Yunnan Province before they were escorted away from the carriageway by local traffic police recently. 

The herd of six wild elephants somehow wandered onto the Silan Expressway in Pu’er city, Yunnan, around 6:30 am on May 7. Footage of the surveillance camera shows that they walked carefreely and leisurely during the dangerous stroll and constantly changed between the carriageway and the passing lane. 

The speed measurement device shows that they were walking at the speed of 17 kilometers per hour. 

One of the elephants was so mischievous that it even fiddled with a sign on the roadside. 

The local expressway traffic police and the expressway management department immediately started an emergency response to identify the elephants’ location and their movement, and reminded passing drivers and passengers to pay attention. 

According to Yao Jiandong, a policeman from the local traffic police in Pu’er, the elephants did not destroy other facilities and they left the expressway with the police’s escort after strolling for about 10 minutes. 

The section of Silan Expressway in Pu’er is an activity area for wild Asian elephants. 

A herd of 15 wild Asian elephants came into the global spotlight in 2021 after they went on a 1,400-kilometer “exodus” in Yunnan and finally returned to their original habitat in Xishuangbanna, with two calves born during their unusual northward journey between March 2021 and September of 2022. 

Global Times