These British tourists looked stunned after taking a holiday photo with this cheeky monkey in Bali, Indonesia.
Chloe and Craig Dennis were in the Ubud Sacred Monkey Forest when they encountered one of the 1,260 Balinese long-tailed macaques native to the area.
Incredibly, they appeared to capture the moment by tying up the monkey for a remarkably good selfie of the three of them.
The resulting photo showed Chloe and Craig with a look of apparent disbelief on their faces as the primate posed with its mouth open.
Chloe, from Devon, UK, said of the getaway: “It was definitely the trip of a lifetime!”
Chloe and Craig Dennis say the monkey took the photo of them while they were on vacation in Bali
He Ubud Sacred Monkey Forest is a nature sanctuary in Padangtegal village, Ubud, covering about 12.5 hectares of land and home to around 1,200 monkeys.
Since the 14th century, the forest has been considered a sacred place and is home to three temples.
The monkeys are believed to symbolize both protection and mischief, something that is featured in the selfies they offer for IDR 50,000 (£2.50) each.
Today, the forest gets by on its responsible tourism trade, helping to preserve it as a vital conservation area.
Encouraging people to achieve spiritual and physical well-being through a harmonious exchange with the environment, the stewards invite people to approach the land’s native monkeys responsibly.
The monkeys are believed to live in 10 separate groups, each with their own territory, within the forest.
Locals and forest workers continue to provide them with a steady diet of sweet potatoes and bananas.
In return, the monkeys seem very happy to offer selfies to tourists.
Visitors can purchase a voucher for the “monkey selfie activity.”
They are advised to keep a good distance from the monkey if they wish to take a photo themselves.
A legal precedent was set in 2018 when another monkey stole a photographer’s camera and started taking selfies.
Naruto, a crested macaque also from Indonesia, took several now-famous photographs with David John Slater’s camera while on a mission in Indonesia.
The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a lower court’s ruling that animals have no legal rights to the photographs they take after their copyright status was questioned.
People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) had sued Slater and the self-publishing company Blurb on behalf of Naruto in 2015, arguing that publishing and selling the photos without [Naruto’s] The permission infringed Naruto’s rights detailed in the Copyright Law.
Generally, the author and initial copyright owner of a photograph is the person who took it, under both US and UK law.
In the end, the court ruled: ‘Our court’s precedent requires us to conclude that the monkey’s claim has merit under Article III of the United States Constitution.
“However, we conclude that this monkey (and all animals, since they are not human) lacks legal status under the Copyright Law.1
“Therefore, we affirm the district court’s ruling,” Judge Carlos Bea said.
In settling with PETA, Slater agreed to donate 25 percent of any future income derived from the use or sale of the photographs to charities that protect macaque habitat in Indonesia.
A crab-eating macaque in the Ubud Monkey Forest, Bali, Indonesia. Without date
Balinese take part in a purification ritual at the Beji Temple, located inside a monkey sanctuary in Ubud, on the resort island of Bali, Indonesia, on August 15, 2019.
According to a joint statement, “PETA and David Slater agree that this case raises important and cutting-edge questions about expanding the legal rights of non-human animals, a goal they both support, and will continue their respective work to achieve it.”
TO statement PETA at the time said: ‘Naruto and the famous ‘monkey selfie’ photographs he undeniably took clearly demonstrate that he and his fellow macaques, like so many other animals, are highly intelligent, thinking and sophisticated beings worth having. legal ownership of their own intellectual property and holding other rights as members of the legal community.
‘Naruto’s case went all the way to a federal appeals court and shows that the fight for animal rights is rooted in our legal system. We will continue to work in the courts to establish legal rights for animals.
“Everyone deserves the rights we hold dear: to live as they choose, to be with their families, to be free from abuse and suffering, and to benefit from their own creations.”
MailOnline has contacted Ubud Sacred Monkey Forest for comment.