I can't remember when I first heard about what I affectionately refer to as "cat poop coffee." But I do remember not believing it was real. I'm still having a hard time, to be honest. But cat poop coffee — that is, civet coffee (or "kopi luwak," as pronounced in Indonesian) — is real, and really expensive. Like $60 for 4 ounces of beans — or in some boutique cafes, at least $10 a cup. That's a bargain compared to what it costs for elephant poop coffee; The beans are literally gathered from animal feces. And for the purposes of empirical research, I got my hands on some for a taste test. I bought two little samples (costing more than $100) from two companies. Not wanting to screw up this pricey cup of joe, I brought the beans to a nearby cafe, Chinatown Coffee, to have the baristas do their magic. At first sip, I wasn't wild about it — though maybe I would have thought differently if I hadn't known its provenance. Tim Carman, food writer at The Washington Post, did his own taste test earlier this year: "Petrified dinosaur droppings steeped in bathtub water" is how he put it.

Andrew Shields, the Chinatown Coffee barista, on the other hand, seems pleasantly surprised. "I've never had anything like it," he says, using words like "vegetabley, tea-like and earthy" to describe the taste. "Is it worth it?" he pondered the price out loud, "for me, not regularly." So why are people willing to pay so much for this stuff? Let's start with coffee production 101: Coffee beans are actually seeds found in the pit of cherry-sized fruits on the coffee plant. White German Shepherd Puppies For Sale EssexTo arrive into our cups at Starbucks, the seeds are separated from the fruit's flesh, fermented, roasted and ground in various and increasingly complex incarnations. Take Apart Price Pfister Shower FaucetWe crafty humans have devised several ways to synthesize that process of fermentation.Firehouse For Sale In Philadelphia

But fermentation also happens naturally in the wild — in an animal's digestive tract, for example. And the Asian palm civet, a native mammal (not really a cat) to Southeast Asia, eats the ripest berries of a coffee plant; through the process of digestion, the seed is separated from the fruit and is fermented. Traditionally, wild civets would go about their business and humans would collect the fermented droppings. "When you see it in the wild, it looks kind of like an Oh Henry! bar," says coffee historian Mark Pendergrast, author of Uncommon Grounds. Some coffee connoisseurs say that the natural process of fermentation leaves the final cup of coffee tasting much smoother and less acidic than any other coffee. That doesn't necessarily explain the price tag, though. "It's incredibly expensive because it's so rare," Pendergrast explains, "not because it's such a wonderful coffee." And it's not even as rare as it used to be. "The problem," says Oliver Strand, another coffee connoisseur, "is that it became so desired as a luxury good that they started caging the animals and feeding them coffee that isn't ripe."

Strand, who often writes about coffee for The New York Times and is working on a book, says that not only is the fruit unripe, but also that some civet farmers are feeding the animals varieties like Robusta, decried by many coffee lovers as an inferior bean — the one often used in instant coffee. "There's a fetishized market for the coffee," says Strand, "which has incentivized less-than-ethical practices." To that end, Pendergrast actually argues that we should be paying more for coffee in general. One of the main reasons he wrote a book about the coffee market, he explains, is that "it's a very good way of looking at the relationship between the developed and underdeveloped world," he says. "The people making our coffee are sometimes making less than $1 a day, and yet we pay $3 for a cup of coffee." So that's the world we're living in — a world in which cat poop coffee has been fetishized. Then again, I've seen stranger things. Bottom line (pun intended): If you decide you want to try the coffee yourself, be careful where you get it.

And although few of the aforementioned tasters would pay for it — I know I won't buy it again — that doesn't make us any less insane: At the end of the day, we all readily drank coffee from an animal's feces. Did I mention bird poop coffee? While writing about cat poop, Claire was neglecting her normal duties at The Picture Show, NPR's photo blog. Doi Chaang – Wild Thai Civet Coffee Gift Box Civet coffee is the most rare, unique and highly coveted coffee available in the world. Civet coffee is made from coffee cherries that have been passed through the digestive system of a civet, a cat-sized mammal that is found in Southeast Asia and Southern China. Doi Chaang Wild Civet coffee beans receive a medium-light roast to maintain the unique, complex flavours that develops while the coffee cherries interact with the civet’s digestive system. Wild civets will feast on only the ripest and sweetest coffee cherries when the fruit is at its peak, which ensures that only the best beans have been ingested.

Rated as one of the best civet coffees in the world100% Arabica beansThe only single estate Thai coffee available in North America50% grower owned, Beyond Fair TradeGrown in Thailand and roasted in CanadaModel: 3003Civet Coffee added 5 new photos from August 30, 2013 to the album: Civet Coffee now sold at Baguio Country Club — at Baguio Country Club.Proud to announce that our line of Civet Cat Coffee products are now being sold in the Gift Shop at the iconic Baguio Country Club. Grab a cup of luxury to go along with BCC's famous raisin bread!There's a scene in the movie The Bucket List where Jack Nicholson's billionaire character realises kopi luwak – the "fancy" coffee he insists on drinking – is made from the faeces of a cat-like creature."You're shitting me?" he says. "Cats beat me to it," his terminally ill mate replies. Both men laugh until tears stream down their faces and then his friend ticks: "laugh until I cry" off his bucket list.Scatological jokes aside, there is a well-documented dark side to kopi luwak, which is also known as civet coffee.

In February, civet coffee plantation tours were ranked among the world's top 10 cruel animal attractions by World Animal Protection. "There is now a growing civet coffee plantation tourism industry in Indonesia where tourists visit caged civet cats and sample the coffee," says a report by the University of Oxford's Wildlife Conservation Research. "This is causing more and more civets to be caged and abused."Kopi luwak  is made from coffee cherries that have passed through the intestines of a common palm civet (known as a luwak in Indonesia); a small, nocturnal carnivore. The enzymes break down the beans, which when roasted, create a smooth, less bitter brew, according to some coffee connoisseurs. (Not everyone is a fan. The Washington Post's food critic Tim Carman wrote of his experience: "Stale. Petrified dinosaur droppings steeped in bathtub water. I couldn't finish it.)World Animal Protection says that when civet droppings are collected from the wild, no cruelty is involved.

Indeed the history of kopi luwak is purported to date back to the Dutch colonial era, when native coffee plantation workers were forbidden to pick coffee for their own use. They discovered undigested beans in civet droppings and created their own aromatic brew. However in recent decades the coffee – with its irresistibly weird back story – has become a global sensation, with wild-sourced beans fetching prices of up to £2000 ($3700) a kilo.The massive international demand and exorbitant prices led to civets being caged to increase productivity and create commercially viable quantities of civet poo. "Caged civets are encouraged to gorge on an unbalanced diet of coffee cherries," the World Animal Protection report says. The process has been compared to fattening geese to create foie gras but with a lot more caffeine. "Many show signs of great stress, including pacing and self-mutilation. This unnatural captivity and forced feeding results in injuries, disease and poor nutrition."

But despite their famous faeces, little is known about the common palm civet itself, according to PhD student Peter Roberts, a lecturer in animal care in Britain. "How can we look after the species in captivity without knowing how they will behave in the wild?" Roberts aims to collect data on the habitat use, behaviour and estimated population of civets around the village of Cipaganti in Java for the PhD he is doing at Oxford Brookes University. He hopes his research will add vital information to what is known about the ecology of the species and contribute to better animal husbandry and management policies.However, because funding invariably goes to rare species – the civet is listed by the International Union for Conservation of Nature as a species of "least concern" – his PhD is largely self-funded. It's been a painstaking process. A recent attempt to crowd-source 10 camera traps raised a paltry £15 in 56 days.Meanwhile, the trade in civets is increasing dramatically in Indonesia.

Civets have become a popular exotic pet in Indonesia and there has been a rise in the popularity of kopi luwak and civet coffee farms in Java and Bali.The problem, Roberts says, is that no-one has been able to quantify what damage this trade is doing to wild populations. "More wild research is desperately needed."Although common palm civets are not protected in Indonesia, trade is regulated through an annual quota system. In 2016, a total of 250 common palm civets can be captured for domestic use and 225 for export from just four provinces in Indonesia.Eko Arifyanto from the Biodiversity Conservation Agency says this is to keep the balance of the number of animals in the wild. There has not been a request for one permit this year.However the sheer numbers of civets for sale in Javan and Balinese animal markets alone suggest this quota system is simply not being enforced. "It is difficult to know because we have very limited human resources while our coverage area is quite big," Eko says.

When Fairfax Media visited Pasar Satria, a market in Denpasar, young civets were available for 450,000 Rupiah (about $45) each.Author and former coffee trader Tony Wild believes he spawned a monster. Wild claims to be the first person to bring a kilogram of kopi luwak to the west in 1991, while working as a coffee director for Taylors of Harrogate. The product, with its "certain repulsive charm", became a media sensation beyond his wildest dreams.However two decades later, while researching his book Coffee: A Dark History, Wild learnt civets were being poached and caged all over south-east Asia and force-fed coffee cherries.In 2013 he started the Facebook campaign Kopi Luwak: Cut the Crap. He also played a key role in a BBC investigation of animal cruelty on civet farms in Sumatra. "I don't think a large number of consumers have been put off by the life of the animal – kopi luwak is pretty much everywhere in Indonesia, and I think you will find probably the same in south-east Asia," he says.

Wild does believe there is a sustainable business model in genuine wild kopi luwak. In Gayo, for example, a famous coffee producing region at the tip of Sumatra, Anasryta has been gathering civet faeces foraged by collectors for more than 20 years. Gabah (the cleaned coffee beans) are worth 80,000 rupiah ($8) a kilogram. "You can tell the difference, which kopi luwak is from the wild and from the farm," Anasryta says."The wild has a richer taste, luwak in the wild eats all kinds of stuff, skins of trees, fruits."However many kopi luwak producers are now savvy to the controversy around caged civets. "You will find most kopi luwak is now marketed as "genuine wild" kopi luwak," Wild says. "There's really only one way of telling and that is having a personal relationship with the producers and going to the plantation and even then it's difficult to prove." Coffee certifiers Rainforest Alliance and UTZ Certified – the world's leading label for sustainable coffee production – no longer certify coffee producers that use caged civets or other animals.

And in June 2015, Indonesia introduced standards for luwak coffee production, that emphasised the civets were not to be starved, harmed, scared or depressed."We welcome the Indonesian government recognising there is an issue, however if they truly wish to stop the suffering then all caged production of kopi luwak must be prohibited," says World Animal Protection's Joanna Toole. "There is no justification to take these animals from the wild and keep them in confinement for years on end to produce a luxury coffee for tourists."Bali Geo is a kopi luwak cafe in Ubud that opened several weeks ago.The cafe has three civets on site, but the owners say they are for display only, and will eventually be released. "We buy our supplies from a luwak farm up in Kintamani," says co-owner I. Nyoman Lanus."I understand they have about 70 luwak in cages. I know they keep them in good condition. One luwak per cage, so they won't fight each other. They would only be fed coffee beans around three times a week.