London (CNN) A vacation is often an inspiring experience -- but that inspiration can take many forms. Following a holiday to a game reserve a couple of years ago, Paula Ansley was inspired to ask her husband Les a rather unusual question: Would it be possible to make gin using elephant dung?

This strange inquiry came after a game ranger had explained to her how elephants are particular about the food that they forage, yet absorb less than half of what they eat -- meaning much of their diet of plants remains in their dung.

Les, a South African, had moved to the UK years earlier, where he met Paula. Both worked as professors in different fields of biology, but after leaving academia they hatched a plan to move to South Africa to start a business that could contribute to conservation and give back to the community.

So after that visit to the game reserve, Paula, a gin lover, reasoned: Why not let elephants do the hard work of collecting a range of natural ingredients for flavoring gin? Neither had any experience distilling, but the pair took a gamble and in 2018 they created Indlovu Gin, infused with "botanicals foraged by elephants" -- and sourced from their poop.

A guide at Knysna Elephant Park with a bottle of Indlovu Gin.

"We contacted Botlierskop [Game Reserve in the Western Cape] and we said, do you think you could send us some elephant dung?" explained Les Ansley. "They said, yeah sure, no problem, and they mailed us some elephant dung and we started looking at how to prepare it."

Read More