Hippo Poop Is Literally Suffocating Fish

By Mindy Weisberger, Senior Writer | May 17, 2018 07:40am ET

On a savanna in southwestern Kenya, thousands of hippos converge daily along a stretch of the Mara River, gathering in groups among dozens of shallow pools, where they sink into the water to protect their sensitive skin from the sun.

But they aren't there just to cool down — they also come to poop.

As the hippos wallow, they collectively expel considerable quantities of waste — an estimated 9.3 tons (8,500 kilograms) of excrement each day, scientists recently reported. Large animals' feces nourish ecosystems by providing vital nutrients for smaller organisms, but the sheer volume of hippopotamus dung poses a deadly challenge to fish that live downstream from these communal toilets, leaving the fish gasping for oxygen under a deluge of dissolved hippo poo, according to a new study. [How Much of the Ocean Is Whale Pee (and Worse)?]

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$90 for a cup of coffee: world’s most expensive blend is defecated from an animal

Coffee snobs can now take it to a whole new level. The world’s most expensive cup of coffee is made from beans that are extracted from the excrement of a small animal.

The Kopi Kuwak is famously produced by the Paradoxurus, a relative of three different breeds of civet, a slinky mammal that looks like a cross between a cat and a mongoose. The coffee blends originates on the Indonesian island of Sumatra and is produced when the Paradoxurus eats coffee cherries, digests them and then the beans are extracted, cleaned and roasted.

Amazingly, a cup of Kopi Kuwak typically costs about $90. Or, you can pick up a pound of the beans for around $1,000. Just getting a cup of the coffee typically requires an appointment.

Is it the unusual and labor-intensive process that drives up the price? Or, is there something truly, well, unique about its taste?

The coffee website Funnel Mill describes the Kopi Kuwak process as, “The resulting coffee is said to be like no other. It has a rich, heavy flavor with hints of caramel and chocolate. Other terms used to describe it are earthy, aromatic, sweet and exotic. The body is almost syrupy and it is probably the smoothest coffee known to mankind.”

However, the website Touch of Modern is offering a limited run of Kopi Kuwak that is far less expensive. You can pick up a bag of Kopi Luwak Arabica for less than $30. Buying three 150 gram packages of the blend will set you back about $600 but that’s still quite a bit less than purchasing the bleind at its full price.

So, what do you think? Would you spend $600, or even $30, to try the world’s most rare and expensive coffee?

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