The elephant was rescued after a three-hour-long operation.
A video of an elephant being rescued from a ditch in West Bengal's Midnapore has surfaced on social media. It shows a group of forest rangers applying some physics to bring the young elephant out of the pit.
The video has been shared on Twitter by many users, including Indian Forest Service (IFS) officer Parveen Kaswan, who says Archimedes' principle was applied.
“An elephant fell into a ditch in Midinapur. Now how to rescue it. By applying Archimedes' principle. Watch to believe,” Kaswan says in the post.
The video is made up of a series of images, which show forest department officials using water to help the animal float up and then assisting it with ropes to come out of the ditch.
The elephant is also seen struggling inside the deep pit, and trying to use its trunk to come out.
Another IFS and district forest officer (DFO) Sandeep Berwal posted about the rescue on Twitter, where he said the department received a call about the incident at 1 am.
“Few lessons of swimming and learning about buoyancy, the elephant was rescued and guided safely into forest by 4am,” he said in a tweet.
He then said that rescuers should be careful with wild elephants, posting a video of the animal running to the forest after being rescued.
Twitter users praised the efforts of the forest department officials. “My faith in humanity has been restored by such beautiful souls,” said a Twitter user Abhishek Singh.
“Salute to one and all who were involved in this rescue,” tweeted BB Mohanty.
What is Archimedes' Principle?
It is a law of buoyancy discovered by Greek mathematician and inventor Archimedes. It states “any body completely or partially submerged in a fluid (gas or liquid) at rest is acted upon by an upward, or buoyant, force, the magnitude of which is equal to the weight of the fluid displaced by the body.”