If a creature is smart enough to pick coconuts, is it fair to make him? This is the question at the heart of a controversy over pigtailed macaques in Thailand that excel at picking coconuts loved by Western consumers — but do so on leashes.
“What I find most distressing is that they take them from wild, keep them tethered and keep them that way their whole life,” Marji Beach, education director of the California farm sanctuary Animal Place, told NPR . “Monkeys should stay in the wild.”
Leaving the deft-fingered macaques in the wild might deal quite the blow to the coconut biz. As NPR noted , males can harvest an average of 1,600 coconuts per day, while females can harvest 600. Compared with their less-evolved brethren, humans are real apes at this game, bringing home just 80 per day.
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Multiple choice or 50/50 guess?
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Did it pass?
It's fun until the ape uprising.
Caesar's coming back?
So I fear. Bearing a coconut of war.
Almost every comment on this thread has little to do with the seeded article.
Is this the new Newstalkers ?
I missed this article when it was posted.
If the status of these apes is "murky"... what's the appropriate word for the millions of human beings who toil in Hellish conditions?
If we should feel bad for these apes, how should we feel about those human beings?
Oh, let's not think about them at all! Let's make light of the article. Let's do whatever we must to avoid thinking about our passive complicity.