It’s well-known that elephants are intelligent and graceful creatures – but these animals have taken that reputation a step further by becoming professional painters.

The group of seven Asian elephants hold specially-designed brushed in their trunks, which they use to create beautiful floral scenes.

And the clever mammals, who live in Thailand have even developed a skill that humans can’t match – the ability to suck up paint in their trunks to spray it over a canvas like an aerosol can.

For slightly less precise images, the elephants can also use their huge feet – which they dip in paint then use to daub large canvasses on the floor.
The amazing fruits of their labour are then sold on by the sanctuary – for as much as £1,300 each – and the money used to support the Maesa Elephant Camp, where the seven live.

Teaching elephants to paint was a technique pioneer at Maesa, and is now used in several other sanctuaries to help raise money for the animals.

The most sophisticated elephant artists – who were trained by a Chinese painter nine years ago – are now skilled enough to paint realistic-looking bunches of flowers, rather than the more impressionistic work favour by the others.