Monkey Slefies

See that arresting picture of an endangered crested black macaque? It’s a selfie, taken by the monkey. There is a story going around about it: At issue is whether the human primate, David Slater, who owned the camera the monkey used, has a legal claim on the image. He wants Wikimedia to take the photograph down on the grounds that it is “his,” but Wikimedia has countered that because the non-human primate took the photo and not Slater, it is in the public domain. Though this little story provides a welcome distraction from the depressing world news this week, there are some serious questions that it also provokes about the “rights” of non-human animals.

Lori Gruen

Lori Gruen is Professor of Philosophy, Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, and Environmental Studies at Wesleyan University where she also coordinates Wesleyan Animal Studies. Her work lies at the intersection of ethical theory and practice, with a particular focus on issues that impact those often overlooked in traditional ethical investigations. Her most recent books are “The Ethics of Captivity” and “Ecofeminism.”

Of course the idea that monkeys could hold copyrights to photographs they take seems laughable. Legal rights of this sort are reserved only for competent human adults who are in a position to act upon these rights, right? Well, no. They are also reserved for collections of human adults thought of as “corporations”. And there are also legal rights that extend to human children and others who are not able, for any number of reasons, to act on their own behalf to protect their rights.

Last December, this curious feature of the law led the Nonhuman Animal Rights project to file writs of habeaus corpus for four chimpanzees living in New York. The cases were dismissed—but they will be appealed on the grounds that there are certain valuable capacities that the law protects even if the individual right holder can’t bring their claims to court, such as the right to bodily freedom...