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Oceania Cruises, a cruise line owned by Norwegian Cruise Line Holdings, offers excursion tours to Ko Samui, Thailand, where guests can see exploited monkeys forced to pick coconuts. But they don’t see the horror inside Thailand’s coconut-picking industry. Three PETA Asia investigations have revealed widespread abuse of monkeys: Workers were seen striking the small animals, dangling them by their necks, and whipping them.
In the Thai coconut industry, pig-tailed macaques are kidnapped from their mothers in the wild as babies and forced, through physical abuse and fear of punishment, to pick coconuts for coconut milk. Southern pig-tailed macaques are deemed endangered and northern pig-tailed macaques are deemed vulnerable on the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s Red List.
In nature, female macaques stay with their mother for their entire lives and males stay with their mother for several years. They play, eat, explore, and forage together, living in large social groups. They’re empathic, often risking their own lives to help others.
Monkeys’ canine teeth may be ripped out—with no pain management—so that they can’t defend themselves.
But in the Thai coconut industry, they’re fitted with rigid metal collars and chains and leashes are used to choke and control them. Their canine teeth may be removed so they can’t defend themselves. After months of being whipped, struck, and confined in isolation, the sensitive infants “learn” to comply and the forced labor begins. The macaques are coerced into climbing tall trees to pick heavy coconuts despite being ground foragers. They’re frequently bitten by ants or stung by hornets, sometimes fatally. They sustain broken bones when they fall—or are violently yanked—from trees. When they aren’t being forced to work, they’re kept chained on barren patches of dirt or confined to tiny cages, often without access to food or water. They endure extreme mental distress from this joyless life of captivity and abuse.
PETA has contacted Norwegian Cruise Line Holdings about this problem. It responded by saying that it reviews its excursions for “appropriateness,” yet it continues to offer these cruel excursions.
Please help end monkey abuse by urging Oceania Cruises to stop tour excursions to see exploited monkeys forced to work in Thailand’s coconut-picking industry.