This is the touching moment a truck driver allowed a wild elephant to eat sugarcane from the back of his vehicle.

The trucker was driving along rural roads when he spotted the juvenile elephant emerging from the woodland in Chachoengsao, Thailand.

The kind-hearted motorist then parked his lorry to let the pachyderm help itself to the sugarcane loaded on the back of his truck on January 23.

Footage shows the hungry beast extending its trunk to grab dozens of the sweet treats before happily munching on them.

As the animal enjoyed the freshly harvested plants, the driver could be heard cheerfully encouraging it to take as much as it wanted.

In another clip, the man can be seen offering a handful of sugarcane to another elephant in the middle of a dark road later that evening.

The trucker said: 'I often come across elephants during my travels, even at night, and I'd gladly share food with them again.'

Thailand has up to 3,500 elephants in the wild. The population has been increasing in recent years, but it is still a fraction of the estimated 300,000 wild elephants that lived in the country 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.