Elephants eat about 150-200 lbs of food per day, but they have a relatively inefficient digestive system. They only actually digest about 60% of what they eat. This means that 40% comes out the other end as an incredibly useful little package that contains seeds and fertilizer together. This wonderous package gets dropped behind the elephant as it’s walking and then the rest of the herd walks through it all, planting the seeds. This benefits not only the plants, whose range expands to wherever the elephants migrate, but also the other species who rely on those plants for survival. This is one of the ways that elephants are a keystone species. When we protect and conserve elephants, we protect and conserve a wide variety of other species.

Who knew poop was so important?