It’s hard to believe that elephant dung could be the main ingredient of a premium spirit drink, but it’s true. South African gin Indlovu is made with botanicals harvested from the pachyderm poop.

Paula and Les Ansley, both former professors in different fields of biology, decided to moved from the UK to South Africa, after retiring, and come up with a way to contribute to conservation efforts in the region and support the local community. Neither of them had any idea that elephant dung would play such a big part in their plan, it just sort of happened. Today they run a distillery that uses “botanicals foraged by elephants” and harvested from their poop to create Indlovu gin, a unique spirit that doesn’t taste anything like you’d imagine.

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Something doesn’t smell right in Prague, and I’m pretty sure it’s the buckets of elephant dung the local zoo has started selling to visitors, as souvenirs.

That’s right, the Czechs have apparently found a way to turn mounds of crap into piles of cash, by selling it in 1,5 kg plastic buckets, for 70 koruna ($4.20) each . The idea belongs to zoo director Miroslav Bobek, whose last name actually means ‘piece of dung’ in Czech, and believe it or not, it proved a big success. The stinky souvenirs were only introduced last month and sold just on weekends, but sales have been so brisk that management has decided to offer them to the public all week long. It’s estimated the zoo sells around 200 ice-cream-like dung containers every week, most of them to Czech gardeners who use it as fertilizer.

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