Vancouver resident Christian LeBlanc told CBC News the encounter took place on the Thai island of Ko Phangan. While feeding the elephant a bunch of bananas, LeBlanc set his GoPro to capture continuous shots.
“The elephant loves the bananas, so it kind of gets a bit nosy,” LeBlanc explained. “It grabs at your hands, it tries to take all the bananas. And once we ran out, next thing I knew it was grabbing the GoPro.”
Before he could react, the elephant had the camera at trunk’s length, perfectly positioned for a selfie of himself and LeBlanc.
The photo, we’re sure you’ll agree, is pretty darn good for an elephant, and may have some selfie obsessives wishing they had an appendage of similar length instead to hold their smartphone instead of having to carry around an unwieldy selfie stick.
Realizing he had a unique picture, LeBlanc posted it on his Instagram account where, hardly surprisingly, it quickly went viral.
However, in the wake of the Thai elephant’s selfie-based shenanigans, we’re wondering if the elphie will now spread to become an unstoppable craze among the global elephant community. Will elephants around the world now be snatching cameras from tourists in a bid to grab their very own selfie shots? Or will Roger Federer be set upon by an elephant selfie-seeker after the Swiss tennis star’s next match at the French Open? Er, probably not.
