Aggressive elephants in heat sparked concern among villagers as they ventured through their homes in Thailand.

The jumbos had emerged from the forest, destroying electric posts, gates, fences, and crops as they searched for food and mates in Trat province.

The Khlong Kaeo Waterfall National Park staff and its elephant monitoring team said they received a report about the roaming herd on November 5.

Worried residents told them the elephants had been raiding their homes to eat bananas and cassava planted in their gardens.

Officers were dispatched to the scene, where they found several trees and electric poles knocked over, and around 10 bulls in musth that displayed aggressive behaviour.

Resident Amnuay Kotsorn, 68, said: 'There are more than 10 wild elephants that have been coming to the village for several days. They fight each other, both in the day and at night. There was also a small calf with them, around four to five years old.

'Most of us are scared of the elephants. No one dares to go out and tap the rubber trees even though harvesting rubber is profitable right now.'

The national park's wild elephant unit said they have had no rest as the wild elephants are still wandering around the village. They said they were working in shifts to ensure the animals were safely guided away from the residential area.

Male elephants are in musth for a couple of months a year, usually between December and January. They venture out of the deep forest in search of a mate - often appearing on roads and in car parks. They have secretions on their cheeks and fight with other bulls for dominance.

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.