152
Owl in the Coconut Trees
(lemmy.world)
Very special freeze with even more special backlight!
Spotted Owlet shot at a coconut farm
Beautiful!
And good for you :D
My controversial take on coconut farming:
I saw one time people were getting mad at some of the coconut brands/farmers for using monkeys to harvest coconuts.
I watched some videos, and it looked like they were just using the monkeys natural behavior to pick the coconuts. They trained the cooperative ones to pick the ripe ones, and let them climb the trees, knock down the coconuts, and hop to the next tree without coming down, and so on.
It looked like a fairly time consuming and risky job for a human, but the monkey was really hauling butt and looked like a pro.
I'm sure these people are getting paid squat and have poor access to care, so if they train the monkey who is built for this, I'm not feeling so bad, as long as they aren't being mean to the monkey. It was on a lead, but it didn't look mad or scared.
It seemed to be a good system, and I didn't see much in the pro or con videos that had me any more concerned for the monkeys than I was for the farmers.
Also if you've ever seen a coconut fall - it's a little shocking how heavy it lands. It's like a cinder block. Humans can get killed easily standing under a coconut tree, and monkeys are smarter than that :)
I had to go look it up though. The number of people killed by coconuts falling every year is . . . unknown.
"Sorry, pal, but you didn't pay for the additional coconut coverage..."
It's kind of impressive that we're on the edge of being possibly the first spacefaring species in the universe, but we are still done in regularly by plants, insects, mollusks, and single cell organisms...pretty much the oldest stuff around. Keep us humble, "lower species!"