Face with shortages of food, the Zimbabwe army has taken to eating elephant meat, say reports from the sub-Saharan country. With 1,700 dead from a cholera epidemic, runaway inflation, and a dictator that doesn’t seem to care about his country’s misfortunes, Zimbabwe would seem to have more than its share of disturbing news, but a new report from independent web-based news outlet ZimOnline says that the Parks and Wildlife Management Authority has delivered elephant carcasses to army barracks around the country.

“Soldiers started eating elephant meat last week,” said a senior officer at Cranborne barracks, a few kilometers outside Harare city center.

The army, which has been critical to Robert Mugabe’s grip on the presidency, has been plagued by shortages of food, boots, and other essentials. For most of the last year, soldiers have been fed little more than a gruel of ground maize, and late last year angry army members rioted in protest in the capital, Harare. Poor agricultural yields since 2000 have crippled Zimbabe’s ability to feed itself, and inflation as high as 231 million percent has made it practically impossible for Mugabe to import food.

Elephants are one of Zimbabwe’s riches. A ban on ivory and poaching has enabled the population to grow to 100,000, more than twice that 45,000 that scientists say the country can support. And while culling is standard to keep the herds in check, serving elephants for dinner is not—at least not officially. But illegal bushmeat trade is a huge issue in Africa. The Wildlife Conservation Society estimates that one million metric tons of meat are taken from African forests annually. In East Africa, refugees are eating chimpanzees, buffalo, and sable antelope. One-fifth of the endangered species on the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s “red list” are being reduced by bushmeat trade.

Eating elephants seems especially hard to stomach given today’s story from Scientific American, which reports that elephants really do have phenomenal memories, which enable them to track all individuals in a large herd or recall an elephant they’d known briefly years before. They’re also the only animal besides man, chimps, and dolphins that can recognize themselves in a mirror.

Neither the defense nor parks ministries would comment.