The public has delighted in the elephants’ antics, including parading down city streets, guzzling grain alcohol and dozing en masse in a field.

But it’s a jumbo task for the three dozen Yunnan forestry firefighters charged with shepherding the elephants safely home – including tracking animals at night that can disappear into thick forest and trek up to 30km (18 miles) a day.

It was the furthest north that China’s wild Asian elephants had travelled in recorded times, said Yang Xiangyu, a task force leader.

“Before this, we only saw elephants in the zoo or on television,” he said.

Alarmed officials formed the task force in May as the elephants neared Kunming, the regional capital.

Its members use drones to keep tabs on the animals, sleeping out in the subtropical air or in their vehicles.

‘Truman Show’ circus around China’s roaming elephants ignores habitat loss

On a recent morning, team members stood before a large-screen TV in a temporary village headquarters as frontline colleagues beamed back the day’s first images.

As white clouds parted, unmistakably elephantine grey-brown outlines appeared down in a forest clearing near a village, their trunks probing around for a final snack before bedding down during the daytime heat.

They stir again around dusk, and their trackers move with them.

When they approach a village, loudspeakers and door-to-door checks urge locals to shut themselves in, preferably upstairs, out of reach of the hungry visitors.

Power supplies are cut to prevent the elephants from being electrocuted or sparking fires, and vehicles are parked across roads behind the herd or on side routes to keep them moving forward, preferably south.

Once through, their new location is plotted, the weary task force redeploys and the circus resumes the following dusk.

The elephants have dazzled their chaperones with their intelligence.

A mature female leads, always finding the best path towards food and water or the safest point across a stream, according to Yang.

They use tree branches gripped in their trunks to help comrades scratch a hard-to-reach itch, swat bugs or seemingly draw designs on the ground.

Mud is employed as sunscreen, they may fashion a crude “sun hat” out of vegetation and their dexterous trunks can turn on a tap, open a door or lift covers off water wells for a drink, Yang said.

There are three juveniles, two born during the odyssey, according to officials. Adult elephants have been seen using their huge bulk to crush traffic crash barriers so the youngsters can clamber over them.

China’s state-controlled media has cast them as the lovable protagonists in a national lesson on conservation.

But the elephants, which can weigh up to 3.6 tonnes (4 tons) and sprint as fast as Usain Bolt, are also extremely dangerous, particularly if they sense a threat to their young.

Habitat loss puts the squeeze on China’s growing wild elephant herd

Two that had earlier broken for home trampled a villager to death in March, said Chen Mingyong, a Yunnan University elephant-behaviour expert attached to the task force. The fatality appears not to have been reported.

“This needs to be faced squarely. The Asian elephant is a wild beast and we have to keep a safe distance,” Chen said.

Media are kept away from the animals on safety grounds.

Why the elephants began their trek remains a puzzle.

Possible explanations include tighter competition for resources because of an increase in wild elephants in their home range.

Researchers are particularly stumped over why the skilled navigators made a nearly straight beeline for Kunming before angling back south a couple months ago.

Elephants typically circle around in their hunt for food, Chen said.

“There have been many behaviours for which we previously have not had sufficient data.”

They have travelled more than 700km, Yang said, and though now pointed homeward, still have several hundred more to go.

And the smart foodies appeared to be slowing, unwilling to rush through the cornucopia ripening around them in the summer sun, Chen said.

But cool autumn weather is expected to eventually hasten them home, a bittersweet prospect for Yang and his team, who have become attached to the gatecrashers.

“As soon as [trackers] see the elephants on our monitors, they feel very happy despite the hard work and toil,” he said.