Heartbreaking footage shows a chained monkey desperately clinging to a tree to survive after the ground was covered in floodwater in Thailand.

The primate was being kept as a working animal in the controversial coconut harvesting industry when the rain hit Pattani, southern Thailand, earlier this month.

Using its natural instinct to survive, the monkey clambered up a nearby tree but was unable to make a full escape to safety because of the iron shackles around its neck that were tethered to the ground.

A resident who was wading through the water to get to higher ground recorded the struggling monkey. He said: ‘I felt sorry for him but he belongs to somebody so I couldn’t just release him and I didn’t have a key. I told other people in the village about the monkey so they could find the owner.’

Thailand controversially uses trained monkeys to harvest coconuts from the top of palm trees. The coconuts are then used for producing coconut milk.

However, the industry attracted controversy last year and a number of supermarkets agreed to stop selling coconut milk that had used monkeys as part of the process.