The age old question of who owns the copyright if a monkey takes a selfie has finally been answered...

It turns out that when a monkey takes a picture using your camera, you can't claim copyright on the image, or at least that's what the U.S. Copyright Office has ruled in a recent judgement. 

The case came about because David Slater, a photographer who was touring the jungles of the Indonesian island of Sulawesi came across an endangered species of monkey, the crested black macaque, and tried to capture a few images with his camera. 

However, the monkey herself had a similar idea, and snapped a now famous image (above) of her own face, possibly the first recorded instance of a monkey selfie. We've not got the stats to back that up though. 

Anyway, the picture ended up on Wikimedia, who claimed that if anyone, the monkey owned the copyright, whereas Slater claimed the now famous snap was his. This latest ruling, however, seems to have fallen on the side of Wikimedia, and the exact wording also cleared up a few other cases: 

"The Office will not register works produced by nature, animals or plants. Likewise, the office cannot register a work purportedly created by divine or supernatural beings, although the office may register a work where the application or the deposit copy(ies) state that the work was inspired by a divine spirit." 

So if a ghost, a Venus fly trap or Jesus tries to take a selfie, they can also just be lashed up on Wikimedia too. 

Via Mashable