The coconut, sexy as you've never seen it! For illustrating this section, we can produce on request at least one large size HD poster (up to 180x100 cm in size). This poster will be adapted to each country, on a case-by-case basis. It is also possible to buy or rent items from the personal collection of Dr R. Bourdeix.
If someone
should, however, suggest that you go and “suck the monkey”, he or she may be
only be suggesting that you go for a drink. In the Royal Navy, “sucking the
monkey” was the surreptitious drinking of the purser’s rum through a straw
forced through a small hole in the rum cask. Originally, sucking the monkey
referred to drinking rum from a coconut through a straw.
Some have suggested that the three dots on the coconut resembled a monkey’s face. On other hand, the adjective “monkey” was used by sailors to describe almost anything small. A “monkey jacket” was a small jacket and a “monkey block” was a small block. A “monkey pump” was the quill or straw with which the sailor “sucked the money”, be it a coconut or the purser’s cask. Which came first, the coconut or the straw? It probably doesn’t matter.