A hungry mother elephant and her calves rummaged through a home in search of food.

A passing tourist spotted the jumbos looking for a meal near a wildlife worker's home in Nakhon Ratchasima, Thailand.

Footage shows the leathery beasts roaming outside the shelter on January 18, unable to barge inside despite their efforts.

In another incident, a wild creature named Plai Wong Thong visited a villager's house for a late-night snack in the same province on March 30.

The pachyderm rifled through the kitchenware for food scraps as the homeowner shouted in an attempt to drive it away.

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.'

Elephants are known for their voracious appetite. The World Wildlife Federation (WWF) found the 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.