Do you're telling me that it had nothing to do with swallows being either European or African?!
this post was submitted on 23 Mar 2025
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It could grip it by the husk.
It’s not a matter of where it grips it! It’s a matter of weight ratios!
I’m so glad that this 50-year-old joke is still funny.
Good jokes never die, nor do Black Knights.
...we'll call it a draw.
It's far too perilous!
What are you gonna do, bleed on me?!
What's not funny is how old I feel now
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Depends. Does the coconut weigh more than a duck?
I don't know, I wasn't expecting some kind of Spanish Inquisition.
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35 million years of coconuts in Asia and they didn't float over until after traders established shipping routes to Asia?
Yes, but for human related reasons. Humans moved them around a lot in Africa and Asia - moving them from Southeast Asia to India and Madagascar is bound to have an impact on the currents they get caught up in.
are you proposing some kind of Columbus effect where people heading to India will occasionally end up in Taino land by accident
So thanks to humans more coconuts went for a swim?
According to the first article that popped up in the search results the most likely theory is portugese traders brought them over from madagascar.
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The float yeah and that's how they spread, but the coconuts were mostly brought by ships.
A coconut is really good on a ship 500 years ago, you have fresh water, some nutrition, etc.
Some ship gets destroyed with a load of coconuts on board and so it began probably.
Then when even the first ones have taken root, they start floating from isle to isle themselves.
No, it was clearly the Swallows gripping them by the husks!
I wish someone gripped my husk.
"500 years ago*
Columbus makes the trip in 1492, 533 years ago.
Yeah that checks out.
I'm gonna cast doubt on this. It happened too conveniently after people figured out long distance sea travel.
If they would have floated it's much more likely that it happened somewhere in the last million years rather than the last 500.
they only think coconuts floated over on their own 500 years ago because austronesians are supernaturally invisible to white people
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Coconuts have evolved to spread from island to island by floating, but it's still weird that one happened to float to the other side of the world in historic times. I would have guessed that either the currents could never take a coconut there or that the currents would have taken a coconut there long ago.
(When I visit Florida, I see coconuts float by sometimes. Some have been in the water a long time - they're covered in barnacles. However, if they're still floating does that mean they might still be viable?)
Y'know... I'd have found all this "coconuts floated from Asia to the Caribbean" stuff pretty far fetched...
But not two years ago I was fishing, and a goddamn coconut floated right down and bumped me in the leg.
In the Monongahela River.
In Pittsburgh.
No swallows necessary
That's not what my partner says uwu
Caribbean from Asia? did they take the Panama Canal 400 years before it was built? there is not path that isn't crazy
Asia via the Pacific to the Americas, then a swallow grabs one and brings it to the Atlantic coast.
African, or European?
Excuse you, this is MURICA, those are FREEDOM SWALLOWS 🦅🦅🦅
gulp gulp gulp
Look like I got some on my cool red hat oh nooooooooooo uwu
They went around the horn like a real man!
There's a current originating in Indian ocean flowing south of Africa to the gulf of Mexico, before proceeding north east between Iceland and Great Britain. It's why Scandinavia is so much warmer than the same latitude in the Americas. I'm 55 north in Denmark, and have hardly seen snow this winter, meanwhile Edmonton in Canada is 2° south of that.
Coconuts bobbing around the south of Africa is pretty wild, but not implausible.
Great article. It's worth remembering that DNA is only evidence that someone banged, and I imagine there's a fair amount of contact that goes on before that.
A North American group from Colombia
I hope this person just meant to say "Native American", and doesn't really think Colombia is in North America.
(sorry, I've spent the last week proofreading articles...)
North America of course being any part of the Americas in the Northern hemisphere --
The funny thing is, I can't even tell if you're being serious or joking...
Even the Columbia part is weird. Should have been "present-day Columbia" or similar.
Yeah, they also varied between spelling it "Columbia" and "Colombia" in the same article.
But I get it, there's not a lot of money in popular science publishing so they may not even have a copy editor, at least those kinds of stories are still getting popularized and not just 'ancient aliens'.
I assumed one finally got lucky and got around the southern tip of Africa while headed west.
So the coconuts migrated, but the majority population of many of the islands were taken there as cargo?
Oof, good point
Please do not disturb the migratory fruits
The swallow may fly south with the sun or the house martin or the plover may seek warmer climes in winter, yet these are not strangers to our land?
This is nuts!
Coconuts: the world's strangest migratory mammal
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