When Asian elephants, they can pull more than 50 pounds a day, which is a gift from nature for Thais. He would collect the elephant droppings, put them in pots and cook them, and finally make them into a delicacy.
As the most continental animal in Asia, the Asian elephant can reach 5~6 meters in length, 2.1~3.6 meters in height and weighs 3~5 tons. Their huge size also means they need a lot of food to compensate for their energy expenditure, so they spend 16 hours of the day foraging. Asian elephants eat wild plantains, reeds or the young leaves of some plants, and the crops in the farmer's fields are also their delicacies.
An adult Asian elephant can eat 60 kilograms of plants a day, but their digestion efficiency is not high, and 60% of them are excreted. Elephants are social animals, and when dozens of elephants move together, the scene of eating and pulling is spectacular, and the feces are troublesome to handle, but Thai residents treat it as a treasure.
Asian elephants are mainly distributed in 13 countries in tropical regions of Southeast Asia and South Asia, including India, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Myanmar, Thailand, Vietnam, Indonesia and Malaysia, and also distributed in China, but there are only about 300 individuals. Of these countries, Thais have the most special affection for elephants.
Thais believe in Buddhism, and in Buddhist legends, Buddha Shakyamuni's mother gave birth to Buddha after dreaming of a white elephant, so Thais regard elephants as guardian deities. If you travel to Thailand, you will find that elephant-related elements can be seen in the streets and alleys of Thailand, and every year on March 13 is Thailand's Elephant Festival, where various elephant performances are held and a lot of delicious fruits are prepared for elephants.
According to statistics, there are about 7,000 Asian elephants in Thailand, of which more than 4,000 are captive-bred. These farmed elephants have an important role to play by using their feces to make "elephant poop coffee". Locals will mix coffee beans with bananas, young leaves, sugar cane and other foods for elephants to eat, due to the elephant's low digestion efficiency, the coffee beans will be in the elephant's body after circling, and then intact excreted, in this process, coffee beans are processed by the elephant's stomach after the decomposition enzyme, will produce a unique flavor.
The staff will collect this feces, wash and sift it, pick out the coffee beans, cook and grind them, and it will become "elephant feces coffee". Such a coffee is not cheap, its price is as high as about 2,000 US dollars per kilogram, equivalent to about 14,450 yuan, can be said to be the most expensive coffee in the world. It is said that elephant coffee has a special nutty and chocolate flavor and rich aroma, which also makes enthusiasts flock to it.
There used to be a kind of "cat poop coffee" that was a similar production process, but because the production of civet cat poop is very small, in order to maximize profits. In this process, the civet cat is constantly crammed by greedy humans, causing great damage to it, resulting in a sharp decrease in the number of civet cats, and this coffee is gradually spurned by people.
Elephant droppings can not only make coffee, they can also be made into paper. Locals wash and filter the collected feces, and then put the fibrous feces into pots for long periods of steaming. During the cooking process, the bacteria in the feces will be killed, and the plant fibers will become soft, which is convenient for further shaping.
These boiled manures need to be dried, and then mixed with some fiber-rich hay or coconut shells to obtain the original pulp for papermaking, and finally put it in clean water and fished out with a strainer mold to get a piece of paper.
In Thailand, paper made from elephant droppings is used to make greeting cards, flower bouquets, paper bags and other crafts, which are expensive, and elephant poop paper has become a favorite project for tourists to try when traveling to the local area. One elephant can produce about 125 sheets of A4 paper in a day. A local company produced 2,809 tons of paper a year from elephant dung and lifted more than 500 locals out of poverty.
Although the output of elephant manure is large, it is not wasted at all, and after removing coffee beans and paper fibers, the remaining residual juice is still a good fertilizer, which can be regarded as maximizing the value of manure.
If you have time to travel locally, try the flavor of feces coffee, and experience the process of turning feces into paper, and maybe there will be surprises.
#人人能科普, there is new knowledge everywhere #
