From top to tail: How elephant-dung coffee is made

A member of the Lisu hill tribe shows off the harvested coffee beans at the Thai High coffee farm.

Ray Buerger, owner of Thai High Ventures, carries a large bag of freshly picked coffee beans at the coffee farm.

Thai elephants during an early morning graze at an elephant camp at the Anantara Golden Triangle resort.

Lun, a Thai mahout, or elephant caretaker, stirs up what will be a meal for the elephants at the Anantara Golden Triangle resort.

Coffee beans are seen being put into a mixture with fruit and rice that will be feed for elephants.

The mahout stirs the mixture with fruit and rice. The Golden Triangle Asian Elephant Foundation, a refuge for rescued elephants, now earns 8 percent of the coffee's total sales, which go toward the herd's health care.

A mahout watches as elephants are fed at the Anantara Golden Triangle resort in northern Thailand. Think of the elephant as the animal kingdom's equivalent of a slow cooker. It takes between 15-30 hours to digest the beans, which stew together with bananas, sugar cane and other ingredients in the elephant's vegetarian diet to infuse unique earthy and fruity flavors, said the 42-year-old Canadian who founded Black Ivory coffee.

A Thai elephant scoops up feed at the Anantara Golden Triangle resort. Elephants don't absorb caffeine from eating raw coffee cherries.

The feed mixture on the ground after an elephant eats offers clues as to why it takes 72 pounds of raw coffee cherries to produce 2 pounds of Black Ivory coffee. The majority of beans get chewed up, broken or lost in tall grass after being excreted.

Niang, a mahout's wife, and her daughter Ari, 6, look for elephant dung at the camp.

A Thai elephant releases dung containing coffee beans at the Anantara Golden Triangle resort.

Niang Homhuan, 37, a Thai mahout's wife, picks coffee beans out of elephant dung at a camp in Chiang Rai province, northern Thailand.

A coffee bean picked from elephant dung.

Mahout's wives pick out coffee beans from elephant dung.

Coffee beans picked from elephant dung.

Niang, a mahout's wife and her daughter Ari, 6, wash the coffee beans thoroughly after picking them from the dung at an elephant camp.

A balance brewer makes Black Ivory coffee at the Anantara Golden Triangle resort. At USD$500 per pound, the cost per serving of the elephant coffee equals USD$50, making the exotic new brew the world's priciest.