Featured on the wrapper of our newest chocolate bar, dark chocolate with salted peanuts, is the African Elephant.
Elephants and peanuts, forever together. What’s not well known is that elephants don’t really eat peanuts. While the combination of dark chocolate and salted peanuts can’t miss, elephants themselves tend to go for something a little lighter. Video via Smithsonian The world’s largest herbivore, Africa Elephants can eat more than 300 pounds of vegetation and drink more than 50 gallons of water every day. Peanuts probably wouldn’t be enough for elephants. In fact, peanuts don’t even grow in Africa and are too high in protein for their diet.
How Did The Myth Begin? This myth may have originated in the days when elephants first became an attraction. Many circuses and zoos in the 19th century allowed visitors to feed the animals, and thought selling bags of peanuts would be the easiest way to do so. Today, our knowledge of elephants is much greater, and the peanut snacking stays with chocolate lovers!
What Do Elephants Eat? Elephants consume grasses, small plants, bushes, fruit, twigs, tree bark and roots. Their trunks, which contain more than 40,000 muscles and when fully-grown can weigh about 250 pounds, are complex yet nimble enough to grab a single blade of grass.
An Elephant’s Favorite Food While you may love our new dark chocolate bar, elephants love the baobab tree. Baobabs are found in mainland Africa, can live for thousands of years and are considered an icon there. Baobabs offer unique health benefits to elephants, storing water during dry season and providing delicious fruit and bark that elephants love. The bark is soft enough that elephants can poke holes through it and tear it off, allowing them access to the baobab fruit inside. Fortunately, baobab bark can regenerate. As long as the damage isn’t too bad, the baobab will survive and repair itself to live for a very long time.
Eating Peanuts To Help Save Elephants As African Elephants pass on peanuts in their own diets, we can add the dark chocolate with salted peanut bar to ours and help save these wonderful animals. Endangered Species Chocolate donates 10 percent of its yearly profits to wildlife causes each year. Our new dark chocolate with salted peanuts bar will help us bring more attention to the population decline of elephants and other species around the world. Not only can you learn about elephants on the inside of our wrappers; we’re giving someone a chance to see African Elephants in person! Endangered Species Chocolate is offering a six-day African safari to be held in Kenya in June 2019. Click here to enter and to experience the trip of a lifetime – and be sure to grab a chocolate bar while you’re at it!
