This is the astonishing moment a wild elephant visited a villager's house for a late-night snack.

The ravenous jumbo named Plai Wong Thong raided the kitchen, waking up the panicked owner in Nakhon Ratchasima province, Thailand.

Footage shows the pachyderm rifling through the kitchenware for food scraps as the homeowner yelled trying to drive it away in the early hours of March 30.

The resident said: 'Plai Wong Thong ate everything it could find, including the chicken feed and other items I had planned to donate to the local temple. It must have been so hungry that it emerged from the forest to look for food.'

He said Plai Wong Thong may have come from the nearby Khao Yai National Park, a UNESCO-listed nature reserve and known elephant habitat.

Elephants are known for their voracious appetite. The World Wildlife Federation (WWF) found need to eat up to 150kg of food per day - the equivalent of 375 tins of baked beans

Conservationists in Thailand say that wild elephants - up to 3,500 of them - have even developed a taste for human food and prefer to rummage through homes and vehicles for snacks, instead of the bland leaves they find in the forest.