profits in monkey business

Press, 29 April 1987, Page 20

profits in monkey business

An enterprising firm in Thailand’s southern province of Surat Thani has discovered that monkeys are useful employees. With the help of an $BOOO grant from the Thai royal family, it is teaching monkeys how to pick coconuts from the trees. With a total output of some 1.2 million tonnes a year, Thailand is the world’s sixth largest producer of coconuts. With the help

of the monkeys, it is fast becoming one of the most efficient. The monkeys are trained mostly at night, because, say the firm’s instructors, the monkeys find it easier to concentrate in the dark.

Not any old monkey will do. Those with what are known as "glasses” — white eyebrows — have a temperament that is usually unsuited to the job of

coconut picking; they often prove lazy.

The monkeys that do qualify are rarely out of work. Up to 800 of them are employed as coconut pickers (and insecticide sprayers) in Surat Thani province alone.

A workaholic monkey can pick as many as 1000 coconuts a day.

Copyright — The Economist.