One woman starts singing in an open field in northern Thailand, and within two minutes a crowd of rescued elephants has drifted over to stand around her in silence. The video, posted on Friday, October 30 by Elephant Nature Park’s own channel, @elephantnews, had been watched more than 161,000 times by the weekend.
The singer is Sangduen “Lek” Chailert, the 65-year-old founder of the sanctuary in Chiang Mai province. In the clip, two elephants named Faa Mai and Thong Ae are the first to stand near her. As she keeps going, the park says, “more elephants begin to approach, drawn by the familiar, comforting sound,” until a loose ring of gray bodies has formed around a very small person.
What the park says is happening
The caption is careful not to overclaim. It says that elephants that hear music they enjoy “often appear more relaxed and at ease,” and that this group gathered “in quiet stillness.” Nothing in the footage looks staged: the animals are untethered, move at their own pace and are free to walk away, which is the whole point of how the park operates. The same channel has for years posted clips of Chailert singing lullabies to individual elephants, so the herd has heard this voice many times before.
We could not find a peer-reviewed study that explains why these particular animals walked toward her, so this article does not pretend to. What the record does show is who she is and why the elephants know her.
Who Lek Chailert is
Born in October 1961 in Baan Lao, a village in Chiang Mai province, Chailert picked up her nickname young; “Lek” means “small” in Thai. She grew up helping her grandfather, a local shaman, nurse sick animals, and at 16 she watched elephants being mistreated while hauling logs. After graduating from Chiang Mai University she began working on elephant conservation in 1996.
Her timeline since then, put together by Badiyaa from the public record, runs like this:
- 1989: Thailand bans teak logging, leaving many working elephants to be sold into tourism or street begging.
- 1998: Elephant Nature Park opens in a valley about an hour north of Chiang Mai city with 34 rescued elephants, at first still offering shows and rides.
- 2001: The Ford Foundation names her a “Hero of the Planet.”
- 2005: Performances have ended and visitors instead pay to help care for the animals; Time lists her among its heroes from Asia.
- 2010: Hillary Clinton recognizes her in Washington as one of six Global Conservation Female Heroes.
- 2016: The tally of elephants she has rescued passes 200, with branch sanctuaries in Surin and Cambodia.
- 2022: France’s president presents her with the Legion of Honour in Bangkok.
Her campaign against phajaan, the traditional “crushing” ritual used to break young elephants, brought her threats, and one of her rescued elephants was poisoned.
The park behind the clip
Elephant Nature Park covers about 250 acres in Mae Taeng District, roughly 60 kilometers (37 miles) from Chiang Mai city. The park describes itself as the first ethical elephant sanctuary of its kind in Asia and says its herds include blind, crippled, orphaned and senior animals retired from street begging, riding camps and circus shows. It also houses hundreds of rescued dogs, plus cats, water buffalo and birds.
It has had hard years recently. Floodwaters from Typhoon Yagi reached the park in September 2024 and forced an evacuation of people and animals; two elephants were reported dead that October. In June 2026 the park said it was struggling with low visitor numbers. A half-day visit currently costs 2,500 baht, and a one-week stay 15,000 baht.
Our earlier piece on Jasmine, Delhi’s last begging elephant, covers a similar rescue story in India. Chailert turned 65 on October 6; the singing video went up 24 days later.
Further reading
Image: Elemanxx, CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons
This article was produced with AI assistance and reviewed by our Editorial Desk. How we work.
