The main ingredient here is the Nature Story of the dining elephant. In the optimizing edit, the story was strengthened by zooming in tight on the feeding and the actual food the elephant consumes which is clearly a very prickly meal.
But there is another ingredient here which is Composition. The tusks of the elephant as well as its trunk and even its tongue create lines which lead the attention to the action in the left lower strong point where the mouth is located.
The more ingredients an image possesses the stronger it likely is. It will help your images if you spot the potential ingredients and manage to emphasize them in the edit.