You'll never forget this YouTube account where a man serenades elephants on the piano

Last summer, we were impressed by a man who took his saxophone out to the edge of a pasture and played music for a rapt audience of cows. In retrospect, having now seen a guy whose YouTube channel is filled with him entertaining elephants on piano, we aren’t quite as blown away. Paul Barton, an English artist and musician living in Thailand, makes the cow entertainer look like a chump. He has set his sights higher, discovering an audience that could very easily crush him by accident if he misses a note.

To get a sense of Barton’s work, check out his most recent video. In it, he sits down at a piano at the edge of a river where Chaichana, “a powerful male elephant” waits to hear some music. Barton obliges, despite the fact that Chaichana is initially restless, swaying back and forth and swinging a trunk around that’s roughly the size of an adult human.

Soon after Barton begins to play, Chaichana relaxes completely. Soothed by the music, he lies down in the mud, curls up his trunk, and soaks in a couple of pieces by his favorite composer, Edvard Grieg.

There are many, many more where this came from. Other videos show Barton performing for a mother and baby elephant …