Have you ever seen an elephant that picks up trash and upstages humans from an environmentally-friendly perspective?

 

A video uploaded in September surfaced recently, where an adult elephant called Nelly is seen on closed-circuit television (CCTV) picking up trash at Thornhill Safari Lodge, in South Africa. Apparently, this was not due to training. Instead, sources say the hulking land animal learned how to interact with its changing environment.

 

The video shows the elephant foraging in a tree near a building before it meanders over to a bucket on the ground underneath the structure’s eave. Initially, it looked as if it were preparing to take a drink. Instead, it notices two pieces of discarded trash, and that’s when the magic happened: the good samaritan uses its trunk to pick up the pieces and place them into the garbage can. It even shows off its intelligence by using its feet as leverage to hoist the scraps into the waste bin.

 

It’s unknown if the video was made from computer-generated imagery (CGI), but a number of readers think the larger message is that humans have no excuse for not keeping the Earth a clean place to call home — especially if an elephant is doing its share and picking up trash.