Huge elephant breaks into temple kitchen to snaffle breakfast

An elephant broke into a kitchen in the dead of the night and finished off rice flour dough that had been kept to prepare breakfast at a temple in India.

The incident occurred at a temple near Coimbatore in South India on the early hours of March 19.

The head cook of Lalithambika Amman temple, who entered the kitchen, was baffled to see the dough missing.

The temple offers food for devotees and the cook had kept the dough ready to prepare the next day's breakfast.

Suspecting that someone may have stolen the dough, the cook checked the footage from the CCTV cameras installed at the temple premises.

Instead of any human thief, he was shocked to find a huge adult male elephant walking in gently and then finding its way to the kitchen.

It managed to discover the dough that had been kept on the kitchen floor in a large vessel and ate it carefully.

The CCTV footage shows the elephant lifting dough with its trunk and putting it in its mouth. It eats cautiously without spilling the dough or disturbing the vessel.

After finishing the dough it looks for more food, runs its trunk over utensils arranged in shelves and again taking care not to upset them.

The terrified temple officials contacted forest officials, requested them to find the tusker and move it deep inside the forest.

Nearly 50 elephants live in the Coimbatore region occasionally straying into human habitats looking for food.