With the unprecedented heat wave sweeping across most states, a video posted by Indian Forest Service officer Parveen Kaswan shows a herd of wild elephants covered in mud and flapping their ears to cool their bodies at a pond in the forest. The young calves are seen jostling about and rolling around in the muddy water.

Some fun. This is how they are killing the heat !! pic.twitter.com/rcChYfWChy

— Parveen Kaswan, IFS (@ParveenKaswan) May 2, 2022

Explaining this behaviour, Kaswan wrote: “This is called wallowing. Elephants love to do that. It keeps them cool. Elephants don’t have sweat glands but have a high volume to surface area ratio and hence heat is generated. So heat dissipation in this manner or by flapping their ears is very important.”

The video has been viewed over 45,000 times so far.