An Indonesian monkey who shot to fame after it snapped a grinning selfie - and sparked a landmark U.S. copyright case - was named "Person of the Year" on Dec 6, 2017 by the animal rights group that took on the simian's cause.
The 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 the then six-year-old 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 nonhuman animal the owner of property, rather than being declared property himself.
PETA: Know More- People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals is an American animal rights organization based in Norfolk, Virginia, and led by Ingrid Newkirk, its international president.
- A nonprofit corporation with nearly 400 employees, it claims that it has 6.5 million members and supporters, in addition to claiming that it is the largest animal rights group in the world.
- Its slogan is "Animals are not ours to eat, wear, experiment on, use for entertainment, or abuse in any other way."
- Founded in March 1980 by Newkirk and fellow animal rights activist Alex Pacheco, the organization first caught the public's attention in the summer of 1981 during what became known as the Silver Spring monkeys case, a widely publicized dispute about experiments conducted on 17 macaque monkeys inside the Institute of Behavioral Research in Silver Spring, Maryland.
- PETA focuses on four core issues-opposition to factory farming, fur farming, animal testing, and the use of animals in entertainment.
- It also campaigns for a vegan lifestyle and against eating meat, fishing, the killing of animals regarded as pests, the keeping of chained backyard dogs, cock fighting, dog fighting, and bullfighting.
