A zoo farm near Bristol has been inundated with pumpkins for Halloween – thanks to the digestive systems of their elephants.
The African elephants at Noah's Ark Zoo Farm in Wraxall tucked in to plenty of pumpkins as treats last Halloween and it's led to an unexpected consequence.
Shaka, 28, Janu, 14, and M'Changac, 11, all live on the farm. Each day staff will remove the poo from their enclosure and add it to a dung pile.
After the elephant's feasting last year, staff thought no more of it - until working around the enclosure in early September when they noticed things sprouting from the pile of dung.
Further investigations revealed bountiful amounts of vegetables, including pumpkins, butternut squashes and even tomatoes.
Seeds from the vegetables which had passed through the elephants’ digestive systems and into their poo had started to grow, providing the unexpected harvest.
A team of three staff then had the unenviable job of digging through the pile of elephant dung to retrieve the home-grown goodies.
And their haul was a bountiful one – with more than 70 pumpkins found along with dozens of squash and tomatoes.
One of the biggest pumpkins had a diameter of 18 inches.
The pumpkins have been used to create displays around the zoo farm for its annual Pumpkin Fest celebrations.
A spokesman for the zoo farm said: “We had always planned to have a pumpkin patch, but this year it happened very much by accident.
“Last year, during our Pumpkin Fest, elephants ate lots of pumpkins, squash and other vegetables.
“The seeds from these vegetables pass right through their digestive system, until they end up in the elephant poo.
“We first noticed things growing from the dung pile in early September and when staff started to dig their way through found dozens and dozens of pumpkins.”
Elephants can poo up to 150kg a day with the waste being collected and popped on the dung pile which is used as a fertiliser for the farm’s crops.
The spokesman added: “Over the course of the past year the fertile elephant dung gave the seeds all the nutrients they needed to grow into these fantastic pumpkins and squashes.”
Once the pumpkin fest is over, the vegetables will be given back to the animals to eat.
And it is hoped that another pumpkin filled dung patch will materialise next year.
According to a new study, this method of seed dispersal may be the answer to re growing the rainforests.
With Brazilian Tapirs munching on plants in the rainforests and then depositing little poo packets full of seeds around for regrowth, some believe this is a good start for fixing the damage to rainforests.
Pumpkin Fest runs at Noah’s Ark until November 2.
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