It appears that monkeys were trained by ancient Egyptians to gather figs from sycamore fig trees and perhaps other fig trees.   I had forgotten about this until recently finding a reference to this practice.    Can you imagine what an amazing arrangement that must have been?    It must have been a revolutionary development (on a small scale) to be able to get fruit that might otherwise would have been difficult to pick high up in a tree and out on a weak limb.

Ingevald

1) Monkeys Trained as Harvesters by E.W. Gudger

  http://www.naturalhistorymag.com/picks-from-the-past/12455/monkeys-trained-as-harvesters

2) The Baboons and Monkeys of Ancient Egypt

http://www.touregypt.net/featurestories/baboons.htm

3) A Pictorial History of the Garden by H.H. Manchester – The Gardening Magazine 1922.  Page 239 (from Google books)

But what is doesn't tell you is how to sell this idea to your wife...

Somebody get an Arduino and program a robotic monkey.

Wow.

I will get some monkeys and train them to pick fruit. I should be in the monkey business.

Bass,
I promise you the last thing you want is a frickin monkey. I've owned 2 of them (not at the same time) and unless you are willing to have a monkey tail around your neck 24/7 they get into trouble.

And not things like the cat pulling off all the toilet paper. Things like sending the neighbors to the hospital or throwing a frying pan through the window or hitting the responding police officer in the face with a hand full of feces so hard he gets welts from the seeds. Then as you're trying to stop the cop from having a truck sent to bust the little guy he opens the refrigerator and runs of with a beer. All monkeys are born alcoholics and they are terrible and mean drunks and they can trow and empty beer bottle hard enough to kill a teenager. Seriously.

That said I've seen them used in the South Pacific to harvest coconuts. 

I've seen birds trained to catch fish.

They train rats to find land mines.

I had a buddy with a parrot that rode a bicycle.

Heck why shouldn't we find some critter to pick our figs for us.

Nice post Ingevald.

What would happen if I tied a chipmunk to the end of a fishing pole?