Nature Video, Intelligent Animals: This Elephant Was Too Smart To Obey Railroad Crossings [Watch]

This elephant apparently has somewhere important to be.

National Geographic has a video of an Asian elephant who refuses to let railroad crossing gates get in its way, lifting the first barrier and walking underneath, and then stepping over the second one. It was shot in the Chapramari Wildlife Sanctuary in India. Although the gates were down because a train was coming through, the elephant thankfully does not encounter the train.

“The scene is a fascinating observation of the elephant's problem-solving abilities, and its blatant disregard for traffic safety measures,” National Geographic says.

Although the sight of an elephant gently going under and over railroad gates seems cute, it could have ended in a much more gruesome fashion. According to that publication, elephants have been hit by speeding trains before, including an incident at Chapramari involving a whole herd.

Read: Elephants to Mother Nature: We'll Sleep When We’re Dead

At the time of that incident, the New York Times reported that it had been a passenger train that struck the herd and killed five of them.

“Their bodies were scattered in pieces, so the authorities were at first unable to count them and reported that seven had died,” the Times said. “One body was left hanging from a railroad bridge.”

After the animals died, their surviving relatives returned to mourn.

“We know they can hear and feel trains coming from kilometers away — it is a mystery why they are so often on the tracks when a train comes barreling along,” elephant behavior expert Joyce Poole told National Geographic. In the case of the one in the recent video, “it looks as though this elephant has done this before.”

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