Pop culture is wrong about elephants loving peanuts

Pop culture is a funny thing. While it can highlight issues, entertain us and set trends, it can also be a source of misinformation.

Take peanuts for example. We are sowing some at the farm soon.

This featured image is from last year though, when we had some peanuts growing too, at the time of our first on site inspection for organic cultivation. It's not easy, and the paperwork is immense. But we passed.

Anyway, so peanuts. Most of the peanuts are for us, though we are also thinking of trying our hand at peanut butter and oil for anyone who is interested this time.

Who these peanuts are not for though, are elephants. See, pop culture and cartoons would make you believe elephants love them. But they actually don’t.

Peanuts originated somewhere in South America and elephants evolved first in Africa. That also tells you peanuts may not be their natural choice of food, and they hardly eat it in the wild.

In fact, elephants need about 150kg of food every day to keep going. Imagine how much peanut they’d need to have. It's pretty much satirical.

It’s believed that in the 19th century when elephants became a part of zoos and circuses, peanut bags were sold to crowds to feed animals, to make some money. Peanuts were cheap, and the monkeys were already having some.

And from there perhaps, pop culture picked it up. Pop culture can be like that, so we need to discern from the media well.

We’ll get back to marking our fields for peanut plantation now. Peanut plants tend to like our sandy soils because the pods that grow underground can find their space. And we can almost assure you now, we like them more than elephants do too.