(This picture taken on February 8, 2018 shows a pig-tailed macaque tied up with a chain outside trainer Wan Ibrahim Wan Mat's house in the village of Melor in the northern state of Kelantan. For a small fee people across the country send their macaques to the famed school, where they are put on thin chains like leashes, and trained to clamber up palm trees and pick coconuts. )
A pig-tailed macaque yanked at a coconut on a piece of string until it fell to the floor, a small victory for the simian student at a Malaysian school that trains monkeys to harvest fruit for farmers.
Thousands of monkeys have been taught the trade over the past four decades by a man known as Grandfather Wan in a small village in the north of the country.
For a small fee people across the country send their macaques to the famed school, where they are put on thin chains like leashes, and trained to clamber up palm trees and pick coconuts.
Teaching monkeys to pick fruit has in the past sparked protests from animal rights groups who have denounced it as cruel, but Grandfather Wan -- real name Wan Ibrahim Wan Mat -- insists he only ever treats his charges kindly.
"They are like our children," said the 63-year-old, as macaques swung about and screeched in a training area consisting of a cluster of palm trees and some dilapidated wooden platforms for the macaques to climb on.
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