Are products that rely on monkey labor unethical?
If you love coconut products, odds are you should thank a monkey for harvesting the fruit.
Animal rights activists are calling for a boycott of products that use coconuts harvested by monkeys. The practice is common in Thailand where pigtail macaques are trained to scurry up trees and pick hundreds of coconuts a day.
The Daily Mail reports "about 1,200 trained monkeys are working as coconut pickers, and all for a couple of bananas a day."
These monkeys work circles around human farmers that pick an average of 80 coconuts per day. An adult male monkey can collect up to 1,600 coconuts in a single day, according to the National Primate Research Center at the University of Wisconsin, Madison.
"What I find most distressing is that they take them from wild, keep them tethered and keep them that way their whole life," Animal Place's Marji Beach told NPR. "Monkeys should stay in the wild."
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