It is said that the most delicious and aromatic tea grows on the steep, rocky slopes of Wuyi Mountain in China’s Fujian province, and it can only be found on a few bushes. However, even the most determined pickers cannot reach this natural wonder. Enter the trained monkeys. They scale dizzying heights, plucking precious leaves from the tea bushes and bringing them back to their human collectors.
But it’s not just in China where monkeys are employed for such “delicate” tasks. In Singapore, there is even a special monkey nursery where these agile climbers are trained for “botanical” work. It turns out they can memorize up to thirty Malay words. That’s more than enough to send a monkey up a very tall and slender tree, instructing it to pick the right branch or fruit and bring it back down to its owner.
Thanks to the help of these monkeys, botanists have already discovered several new plant species in the tropical jungles that were previously unknown to science.