With large ears, ivory tusks, and an extended trunk, the African elephant is the biggest land animal on earth. A bull elephant can develop as much as 13 ft tall and weigh over 13,000 kilos, and if you’re that massive, it takes quite a lot of meals to fill you up! An elephant’s food plan of roots, grasses, fruit, leaves, and bark will not be excessive in vitamin, which suggests they need to go for amount over high quality. A extremely hungry grownup elephant can eat as a lot as 600 kilos of meals in a single day (although often, it’s round 300 kilos). Such voracious appetites imply an elephant spends as much as 16 hours a day consuming. When you mix that with the large distances they roam to search out the portions of meals required to maintain their huge our bodies, means there’s not a lot time left for sleeping!
Now let’s face it, what goes in should come out, and with all that consuming, elephants can produce as much as 220 kilos of dung in a day (to place this in perspective, the typical large panda weighs 220 kilos!) There’s an outdated proverb, “Waste Not, Need Not,” and with such huge portions of “waste,” it’s not shocking that folks have give you some artistic makes use of for the stuff that comes out the again finish of an elephant.
So with out a lot additional ado, let’s take a look at a few of the issues you are able to do with all that poop.
1. Paper
This one is my private favorites.
Elephants have slightly inefficient digestive programs, solely digesting round 45 % of what they eat. Elephants are herbivores, with very excessive fiber diets, a lot of this undigested matter passes straight via them just about intact. Common paper is produced from wooden fiber pulp, however the same pulp might be derived from the fibers in elephant dung.
Nampath Paper is certainly one of about 17 corporations in Kenya that produces paper from elephant dung. John Matano of Nampath defined the method — “After washing, clear fibers stay. Then the fiber is boiled for 4 hours in a vat to totally guarantee it’s clear. Then after that, a lot of the method is just like that of creating common paper.” Matano goes on to say, “125 sheets of A4 paper might be produced from every 50kg (110lbs),” which is what a median elephant excretes each single day!
Whereas “poo paper” might need a little bit of a unique texture than what we’re used to, I undoubtedly suppose it’s value a strive! The dung will also be made into crafts and souvenirs.
2. Can I Curiosity You In One thing To Drink?
You’ve most likely heard of these (considerably unethical) espresso beans that cross via the digestive programs of caged civets. The beans are collected from the civet’s waste; then washed, dried and roasted, earlier than being bought for loopy sums of cash. Somebody in Thailand has give you the same concept however on a big scale! As an alternative of civets, a herd of captive elephants is excreting espresso beans which might be made into espresso. Black Ivory Espresso produces about 475 kilos yearly of what they name “the rarest espresso on this planet,” and serves it in five-star resorts throughout Asia and the Center East. The fermentation course of elephants use to digest the cellulose of their meals apparently brings out the candy, fruity flavors within the beans and offers the espresso a chocolatey, cherry style — however at $120 for simply over a gram, I’ve to be trustworthy and say I haven’t tasted it! (I’ve heard a rumor that for $500 a pound, the one store exterior of Asia that sells it’s someplace in Texas).
So far as I’m conscious nobody is producing elephant espresso in Africa, however there’s undoubtedly one thing I can recommend so as to add to your drinks cupboard or subsequent sundowners — Indlovu Gin. That is gin that has been infused with “botanicals foraged by elephants,” and sourced from their poop. The elephant dung is dried and goes via a sanitizing course of, then rinsed and dried once more, earlier than the ultimate dry product is infused into gin. Does it style like poop, you could ask? Les Ansley, who collectively together with his spouse, based Indlovu Gin says “It’s acquired an earthy, grassy-type taste… relying on the place we gather the botanicals or which elephants we gather botanicals from, the gin taste goes to alter barely.” At $34 a bottle (with 15 % of the income going to the Africa Basis to Help Elephant Conservation) it is a good memento of your African travels.
In case you are in search of one other novelty elephant-themed drink. let me level you within the path of Japan’s Sankt Gallen Brewery and its beer referred to as Un Kono Kuro, it’s made utilizing espresso beans which have handed via an elephant, earlier than present process alcoholic fermentation. The beer was so profitable that preliminary shares bought out on-line inside minutes of its launch.
3. Insect Repellent
The African bush is a tremendous place to spend a while, however you’ll find you’re sharing the bush with a bunch of undesirable insect guests — from ankle biting tsetse flies out on a recreation drive, to mosquitoes buzzing round your ears at evening. And what occurs if you happen to don’t have insect repellent?
Fortunately, I’m not going to advise you to rub elephant poop on your self! However what I’m going to recommend is that you end up the closest lump of dried elephant dung and lightweight it. By burning a dried-up piece of dung, you may ward off most of these buzzy buggers, and the odor is far much less offensive than most of these sprays.
Zambia’s Kafue Nationwide Park is famend for its tsetse flies, and it will possibly actually wreck your afternoon recreation drive when these bloodsuckers swoop in to inflict you with painful and itchy bites. My first encounter with elephant dung as an insect repellent was at Mukambi Safari Lodge, the place our information hung a tin of smoldering elephant dung from the again of our recreation drive car, and the biting flies, who all the time appear to search out me notably tasty, disappeared, virtually immediately.
4. A Supply Of Water
I sincerely hope you’ll by no means end up within the scenario the place squeezing just a few drops of moisture out of a lump of recent elephant poop is your solely probability of survival. However let me inform you in case you are ever misplaced or stranded, and out of water (in a spot the place elephants roam), the answer is at hand. Seize your self a handful of recent elephant dung and squeeze! However received’t it make me unwell, you ask? No, elephant dung has surprisingly little micro organism, and let’s face it, any water might be higher than none in an emergency!
5. Medicinal
Elephants eat all kinds of fruits and foliage. Conventional healers use many of those exact same crops in pure treatments. Elephant excrement can really be used as a ache aid drugs. Merely inhaling the smoke of smoldering elephant dung is claimed to work wonders on complications or toothaches, and it’s additionally mentioned to work to cease nostril bleeds and unblock sinuses.
6. Fertilizer
Subsistence farmers have been utilizing elephant dung as fertilizer for generations. With such poor digestive programs, elephant’s dung makes for glorious compost.
7. Biogas
Some zoos and sanctuaries are beginning to make use of elephant dung, which, with the assistance of biogas digesters, can be utilized to generate gasoline for stoves, warmth, and even electrical energy. With the sheer amount of “materials” the elephants present, they’re good candidates for this course of. The digesters break down the natural waste and gather the methane and carbon dioxide produced, the bio-slurry created as a aspect product is a good fertilizer.
8. A House For Wildlife
Granted this final use for elephant dung isn’t actually for us people, however a lump of elephant dung acts as residence to many creatures. Scientists name elephants “ecosystem engineers.” Their feasting on bushes and shrubs in forests creates pathways for smaller animals to maneuver, and on the savannahs, they uproot bushes and eat saplings, serving to to maintain the panorama open for plains animals to thrive. Quite a few bugs make their residence in piles of elephant poop, together with beetles, scorpions, crickets, termites, and millipedes. In addition to being a extremely nutritious residence for these smaller creatures, it additionally advantages those that, in flip, need to eat these creatures. Honey badgers, mongooses, monkeys and quite a lot of birds will all scratch via dung piles, snacking on the bugs and grubs they discover. To prime it off, elephant dung is filled with seeds, serving to unfold crops far and large.
Bonus: When You Can’t Discover An Apple
So there you’ve got my options for what to do with elephant poop subsequent time you’re on safari. I confess I used to be tempted so as to add a quantity 9 to this listing and title it “A Excellent Reward,” however I knew my youngest son would by no means forgive me! He’s simply turned 20, but it surely doesn’t actually appear that way back that we had been on a household safari and a tiny voice got here from the again seat of the automotive, asking us to cease as a result of he wished to “get a gift for Miss Sarah.” Miss Sarah was the preschool trainer, and Tom had fairly a crush on her. For some motive, my then 3-year-old son thought the surest technique to Miss Sarah’s coronary heart was to current her with an enormous lump of elephant poop when he returned from holidays! We did cease. The lump of poop was fastidiously chosen. And to offer credit score to Miss Sarah, she acquired the providing very graciously just a few days later.
Earlier than you go to Africa, try these hyperlinks:
