Elephant tramples man to death as he tries to take a selfie with it

A man has been trampled to death after he tried to take a selfie with an elephant.

Srikant Satre, 23, and two of his friends ventured into the Abapur forest close to the city of Gadchiroli in central India following reports that an elephant had been spotted nearby.

Once they spotted the elephant, the trio decided to start posing for pictures with the wild animal. 

It was at this point that the elephant charged at them and killed Mr Satre as he attempted to take a selfie with it. 

The workers were in the city, which is situated in the Indian state of Maharashtra, for cable laying work when they heard rumours from locals on Tuesday that an elephant had been sighted nearby.

According to the Indian news website NDTV, the three friends agreed to go and find the animal when they weren't working on Thursday morning.

In September, a five-months pregnant woman and her unborn baby were crushed to death by a herd of elephants in Indonesia.

Mother-of-three Karsini, 33, was tapping rubber trees with her husband Rasum on Sunday when the herd of some 15 jumbos entered their plantation in South Sumatra.

The wife banged empty jerrycans together like cymbals in a desperate attempt to scare off the animals, each weighing up to 4,000kg.

But the wild animals, scared on enraged by the banging, charged the couple and brutally trampled Karsini and her unborn baby to death.

After the herd moved away, villagers in the Musi Rawas Regency collected Karsini's corpse from the forest.

The elephant's conservation status was changed to critically endangered as its population reportedly decline by at least 80 per cent in the last 75 years.

Elephants are rarely aggressive but can act out if they feel threatened, or to protect their young.

In India alone, around 400 people die each year from clashes with elephants, according to the International Fund for Animal Welfare.

Human development has also pushed wild elephants close to extinction; today, there are between 30,000 and 50,000 elephants left in the world.

The majority live in India, where thousands of captive elephants are forced to work their entire lives in grim conditions, overheating, poorly treated and in some cases beaten for acting out.