Affectionate villagers knit warm, colourful, massive jumpers for elephants to protect them from cold

 If the story of six Indian policemen walking 6 miles in blizzard to take a pregnant woman to hospital wasn’t enough to add warmth to our winters, this certainly will do.

Wildlife SOS elephant Conservation and Care Centre in the northern Indian city of Mathura is a project that rehabilitates severely abused captive elephants in distress. The centre currently has 20 such rescued elephants.

The project recently tied up with village women to provide colourful, pyjama-like warm clothing to its precious, large-sized mammals to protect them from sub-zero night temperatures.

According to Kartick Satyanarayan, founder of the centre, it’s very important to take care of these elephants as they were abused and are more susceptible to illness.

“It is important to keep our elephants protected from the bitter cold during this extreme winter, as they are weak and vulnerable having suffered so much abuse making them susceptible to ailments such as pneumonia,” she told the Times of India.

“The cold also aggravates their arthritis which is a common issue that our rescued elephants have to deal with.”

According to Logical Indian, these jumpers are knitted by women from a community called Kalandar community that earlier tamed wild bears and forced them to perform in front of people for their livelihood. Wildlife SOS eradicated that practice and to rehabilitate those families taught them alternative ways of livelihood like knitting.