Spiderman & Insect Research
Few stop to marvel at the backyard tree-scaler who limbers up palms to pluck coconuts for a living in South India. Considering that the trees reach up to a height of 60 feet and coconut grow at the very top of the tree, the hazards of this occupation are obvious. Appachan, a tree-climbing professional from Kerala, has designed an elegant contraption that cuts down some of the risk for the climber; he has a new nickname: “Spiderman!”
Heidi Renninger, a Boston University researcher in the department of Geography and Environment, who studies the physiology of palm trees found this device when she googled the words “palm” and “climber.” She promptly ordered a few for herself.
“I do my fieldwork in the Amazonian rainforest in Ecuador and use the climber to access the canopy/leaves of the two species of palm I am studying; Iriartea deltoidea and Mauritia flexuosa,” says Renninger. “I collect the leaves — make slides, measure cell sizes, and do carbon isotope analysis on them to get an idea of the physiology of the palm. I also mark the base of the live crown of palms varying in size in order to get an idea of leaf turnover rates.” Which would make the coconut climber a neat example of a simple innovation serving science.
There is a low-tech way to pluck coconuts –in Thailand, rhesus monkeys have been trained to do the job. Just how reliable monkeys are, it is hard to tell.