This was the strange moment an Indian elephant suddenly waved her nose while walking along the side of the road.
The female elephant was recorded at Jim Corbett National Park in Uttarakhand State as it whirled behind a safari vehicle.
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Suddenly, she turned away from the road and pushed her trunk and head onto a grassy bank, even lifting one foot off the ground when she pressed into the wet ground.
Photographer Arpit Kubba recorded strange behavior and asked his guide what the elephant was doing.
They said that the elephant was using morning dew to soothe the itch and mixed the trunk with the soil as an exfoliating agent to remove the skin’s parasite.
Mr. Kubba said he followed a group of four elephants consisting of two females and two calves.
He said: ‘This female elephant is ramming her head normally towards us, and all of a sudden it plunges down, and we all asked, “What just happened?”
‘The guides said that elephants use morning dew to self-treat fly bites and infect them with parasites that cause itching.
‘They mixed the dew and soil and put it on their bodies to relieve the pain.
‘That’s how elephants treat their own skin because their trunk and forehead are very sensitive, and they don’t want to rub anything hard.
He added: ‘It’s really out of this world to see such behaviors about how these animals use the environment to heal naturally.’
Mr. Kubba used the Canon 1DX Mark II with a Canon 300mm lens to capture still images of the elephant from a distance of 500 yards.
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