In Thailand, elephants are often used to work as entertainment in the tourism industry, with baby elephants often heartlessly taken away from their natural mothers while still very young. Mebai was forced to leave her mother at a very early age, but another adult female elephant named Mae Boon Sri soon began looking after the youngster.
When Mebai was selected to be relocated to a sanctuary inside an Elephant Nature Park, it was good news. But the bad news accompanying this move was that she was forced to leave her adopted mother behind. It wasn’t until some years later that a rescue team was able to locate Mae Boon Sri and lead her on a five-day journey to the same Elephant Nature Park.
It must be true that elephants never forget, because Mae Boon Sri soon recognized a very familiar face, that of Mebai, who also recognized her long-lost adopted mother. Adding to the elephants’ joy was the fact that Mebai’s biological mother had also been placed inside the same Elephant Nature Park.
All three elephants upon recognizing their long-lost relations began to trumpet and bellow, letting out long held-in screams of happiness. The reconnection between the baby elephant and her two mothers, one adopted and the other biological, was immediate and sealed with a tangle of intertwining trunks to signify the affection they had for one another that time and distance couldn’t eliminate.