Elephants help clear tsunami debris

In fact, the elephants work as a team, so there is room for talents besides brute strength. The more careful elephants help to extricate corpses out of the wreckage, a delicate task since the bodies are badly decomposed. The elephants don't touch the bodies; they gingerly lift whatever has collapsed on top so that a volunteer can remove the remains.

Aside from digging for corpses, the elephants have found another vocation: towing cars.

One of Medang's jobs the other day was to remove a tree and several beams that had fallen on a blue Toyota. As soon as the car was freed, it was attached to a chain harness fitted around the shoulder and front legs of another male elephant, Rachmat. Men hopped in the car to steer as the elephant began to pull.

It made a tremendous sound between the dull thud of the elephant's foot steps and the scraping of the underbelly of the chassis through the wreckage. But before long, the Toyota was on a main street being inspected with satisfaction by its owner.

"I couldn't find a tow truck. And it would have been too expensive anyway," said the car's owner, Firdaus, 29. He paid the equivalent of about $14 for the service.

The Asiatic elephant is indigenous to the island of Sumatra, where Banda Aceh is located, but are rarely seen here nowadays outside of logging sites or nature preserves.