This is the moment a hungry mother elephant and her calf stole food from a family's home in Thailand.

The starving pair emerged from the Phu Luang Wildlife Sanctuary and raided a resident's kitchen for a midnight snack in Loei province on July 1.

CCTV footage shows how the mother jumbo used its trunk to grab a kitchen trolley full of pots, pans, and dishes. However, it was startled when the cookware fell with a loud crash, causing it to flee back into the forest.

Homeowner Natthapong said the jumbo had made off with a bottle of dishwashing liquid. He called wildlife officials for assistance as the elephants might pay him another visit.

Staff from the Phu Luang Wildlife Sanctuary were dispatched on July 2 to drive away the elephants that had entered the community area.

They found the animals resting in the woodlands and tried to push them further back into the sanctuary, but the stubborn calf refused to move. The mum elephant, seeing her baby surrounded by the officers, began pacing back and forth, forcing them to apply a different approach.

Authorities first used firetrucks hoping the jets of high-pressure water would drive the elephants back - to no avail.

They later used a backhoe and successfully relocated the wild animals away from the residential area.

As of 2023, there are an estimated 3,084-3,500 wild elephants in Thailand. The population has been increasing in recent years, but it is still a fraction of the estimated 300,000 wild elephants that lived in Thailand at the beginning of the 20th century. The main threats to wild elephants in Thailand are habitat loss and fragmentation, poaching, and conflict with humans.