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PICTURE OF THE WEEK: Elephants Need Vinegar

Do you have a bottle of vinegar in your kitchen? Many people use it for cooking, cleaning, and baking. In fact, vinegar can be used to polish windows and disinfect bathrooms, plus it's an ingredient in many tasty salad dressings!

People find vinegar very useful. But did you know that elephants find vinegar useful, too? That's right! Apple cider vinegar is very important to the residents at The Elephant Sanctuary in Hohenwald, Tennessee.

The Sanctuary is spread across 2,700 acres of pastures, trees and ponds. It provides a safe home for sick, old or needy elephants. One of the residents is an eight-foot tall, four-ton elephant named Tarra.

So why do these elephants like vinegar? Some of these elephants have a condition called osteomyelitis. This is a foot condition, and it kills more elephants in captivity than any other illness. The elephants afflicted with this condition were given medicine, but they still experienced discomfort. Fortunately, a veterinarian suggested a foot bath in vinegar. And it worked!

The vinegar helped clean and heal the elephants' feet, and the large animals seemed to enjoy the pampering, too! The Sanctuary has enough White House Apple Cider Vinegar to give the elephants a foot bath for the next year.

--Written by Carla Shives

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