Elephant Cleverly Steals Sugar Cane off a Truck in Thailand | Secrets of the Elephants

Thailand Highway 3259 is a sugarcane transport road. Thousands of farmers use it to get their crops to the refinery. But this highway has a toll collector. Locals call him the Don. And this is his territory.

He's a master dealmaker, calculating risk versus reward to get what he's due. The Don can actually sniff out when a delivery truck is on the way. He can gauge quantity using his sense of smell alone. Targeting the trucks carrying the biggest loads. Time to collect his toll.

170 pounds of raw sugarcane provides the 70,000 calories he needs every day. But the Don is not on his own. He's brought some younger bulls along. Henchmen to show them how it's done. They watch the Don's technique. He knows that if they aren't too greedy, the drivers will pay his toll.

And in return, he and his accomplices will stay out of their sugar cane fields. Their observation and knowledge of us has helped elephants to get by in an ever more human dominated landscape. But their long term future may depend on us understanding them as individuals.