‘He is someone, not something’: Indonesia’s selfie snapping monkey Naruto named ‘Person of the Year’ by rights group PETA
People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals announced it was honouring the animal after settling a US copyright lawsuit over the photographs
An Indonesian monkey who shot to fame after it snapped a grinning selfie – and sparked a landmark US copyright case – was named “Person of the Year” on Wednesday by the animal rights group that took on the simian’s cause.
People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) said it was honouring Naruto, a crested black macaque with a goofy looking grin, to recognise that “he is someone, not something”.
In 2011, the monkey pressed the shutter button while staring down the lens of a camera set up British nature photographer David Slater on the island of Sulawesi.
The photos quickly went viral and PETA launched a lawsuit that claimed Naruto should be “declared the author and owner of his photograph”.
“Naruto’s historic selfie challenged the idea of who is a person and who is not and resulted in the first-ever lawsuit seeking to declare a non-human animal the owner of property, rather than being declared property himself,” PETA Founder Ingrid Newkirk said in a statement.