Africa's Big Five animals are very well known: the lion, the elephant, the rhino, the leopard and the buffalo.

Brown bear, polar bear, wolf, bison, elk, wolverine, lynx, cougar... more recently also North America and Europe have tried to identify their iconic large mammals.

What about Selvanuova? We are not daydreaming: of course, we are well aware that our olive groves can compare neither to African savannas, nor to North American prairies, nor to Eastern European taiga... nonetheless, with a good amount of humor and imagination, we could select Selvanuova's Big Five.

What are the most exemplary and noticeable wild animals inhabiting our organic olive groves?

№ 1. The wild boar (Sus scrofa).

The wild boar is a bulky, massively built mammal. Adults average 60-100 kg in weight, 70-80 cm in shoulder height and 140-150 cm in body length. Over the last twenty years, in the south of Italy the wild boar has incredibly recovered from near extinction, now being not an unusual sight also in our olive groves, where it searches for worms and other small animals, roots, shoots, fruits and nuts.

№ 2. The red fox (Vulpes vulpes)

The red fox is the largest of the true foxes, and widely distributed across the Northern Hemisphere. On average, adults measure 35–50 cm high at the shoulder and 45–90 cm in body length with tails measuring 30–55.5 cm. The red fox is present in all our olive groves, where it is mostly active at night, hunting mice, voles and other small animals, although it also loves tasting ripe and sweet fruit like cherries and figs.

Which other animals will have the honour and privilege of sitting among Selvanuova's Big Five?

Stay tuned if you want to discover it... and in the meanwhile, taste our nature-friendly extra virgin olive oil!