A sad harvest
July 3, 2020 11:41 AM   Subscribe

Thai macaque monkeys are kidnapped from the wild, trained, and enslaved to pick coconuts because they are faster than humans.
posted by KleenexMakesaVeryGoodHat (4 comments total)

This post was deleted for the following reason: The Thai coconut industry, and the role of macaques and changes in that over time, seems like an interesting subject for a post, but per some of the comments below I think that post could have more depth and currency in its sources and more care in the phrasing used. Maybe give this another go tomorrow? -- cortex



 
"Enslaved" may not be the best way to put this. It's not a word used in the article.
posted by Wetterschneider at 11:46 AM on July 3, 2020 [2 favorites]


I'm sorry, I did think it was a word used in the article. I will double check that. Mods will you remove that word?
posted by KleenexMakesaVeryGoodHat at 11:52 AM on July 3, 2020


Here is where I saw it in the article. It actually refers to monkey slavery so I felt like I could use the word enslave. "Animal-aware people are increasingly avoiding coconut products that come from monkey slavery,"
posted by KleenexMakesaVeryGoodHat at 11:53 AM on July 3, 2020


Note this article is from 2015. Also contains many quotes from people saying the monkeys are not abused; not sure the article supports your framing of "kidnapped" or "enslaved".

Here's Atlas Obscura's take. And here's an article from yesterday: British Supermarket Stops Selling Coconut Products Allegedly Harvested by Thai Monkey Slaves. This action after a PETA campaign.
posted by Nelson at 11:55 AM on July 3, 2020


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