Sounds completely unrealistic? Yes, it does!
Is it actually real? Yes, it is!
Can even be applied at country level? Definitely!
Sri Lanka planning to send 1,00,000 toque macaque monkeys to ChinaCash-strapped Sri Lanka is considering exporting up to 100,000 endangered monkeys to China, the agriculture minister said Wednesday, raising concerns among conservationists.
The toque macaque is endemic to Sri Lanka and common on the island but is classed as endangered on the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) red list. Sri Lanka bans almost all live animal exports and the proposed sale comes as it faces its worst-ever economic crisis. No financial details were made available.
"They want the monkeys for over 1,000 zoos they have across China," Agriculture Minister Mahinda Amaraweera told AFP.
"I have appointed a committee to study the request and see how we can do this."
Of course, there are a few questions about it and darker aspects of this:
- I don't know how a species that numbers over 1 million can be considered endangered, but let's leave it like that
- even if they have 1000 zoos that means 100 monkeys of the same species for each zoo and that is just not real
- what they are going to do for real with them, and most hint at labs testing, which stops being funny
- how much of the debt will be really erased for this?
But nevertheless, Sri Lanka is in so much debt that it needs either cash or a way to pay out its debts to China so, probably for the first time in human history monkeys will be used en masse to pay for a portion of that debt, giving a whole new meaning to the term "monkey business".
At $4000 per monkey (google sources) that would make about $400 000 000 (in theory, not including costs), around 5% of the 7 billion they have in debt with China.
So, do you feel like you could show up at your bank and hand them two or three monkeys to cover your mortgage?