CURIOSITIES
Elephant Takes Own Portrait on Thai Island; Copyright Left Unclaimed
A student's banana offering in 2015 yielded what he called the first-ever 'Elfie,' and a ruling that no human owns it.
KOH PHANGAN, THAILAND — A 22-year-old student named Christian LeBlanc, feeding a basket of bananas to a group of elephants on the Thai island of Koh Phangan in 2015, came away with a photograph he did not strictly take, according to an account published by Futility Closet.
One of the animals, the report says, seized his GoPro camera by its mount. When the device's self-timer fired the shutter, the result was what Mr. LeBlanc described as "the worlds first ever Elfie."
The student appears to have given the matter some thought. Elephants, he wrote, are incredibly intelligent, and the episode makes one wonder whether the animal acted consciously. The source does not record the elephant's own view.
The question of authorship has meanwhile found an official answer of sorts. Wikimedia, as quoted by Futility Closet, holds that the file is in the public domain because, as the work of a non-human animal, it has no human author in whom copyright is vested.
The elephant, for its part, has made no claim.