[DIGEST: The Guardian, IFLS, Motherboard, Arstechnica]

In 2011, a macaque monkey named Naruto took a selfie that went viral. Now six years later, instead of resting on the royalties, freelance photographer David Slater is near bankruptcy as a result of the shot. The photo came about after Slater traveled to Sulawesi, Indonesia to raise awareness of the species and hopefully earn a bit of cash. He claims that he used ingenuity and coaxing to train the monkeys to take selfies, and ended up with the viral shot. “It wasn’t serendipitous monkey behavior. It required a lot of knowledge on my behalf, a lot of perseverance, sweat and anguish, and all that stuff,” said Slater. Slater obtained a copyright over the image in the U.K., where he resides, and published the photo in a nature photography book.