#Monkey takes selfies and videos with man’s lost phone

One of the many “selfies” snapped by the inquisitive ape.

A Malaysian man went bananas after discovering that his lost phone contained selfies and footage apparently shot by a monkey. He uploaded the wild video to Twitter, where it’s amassed more than 238,000 views since Sunday.

The phone’s owner, Zackrydz Rodzi, captioned the clip: “Something you might see once in a century.”

Indeed, the Johor resident’s Twitter pics show the primate staring down at the device while surrounded by jungle foliage in a shot that looks uncannily like a selfie. Meanwhile, an accompanying video shows the creature seemingly trying to eat the device.

The monkey business allegedly occurred Saturday after the 20-year-old computer science student awoke at 11 a.m. to discover that his smartphone was gone, reports the BBC. Zackrydz initially thought that the device had been stolen but later attributed it to “some kind of sorcery” after finding no evidence of a robbery.

Zackrydz didn’t recover the cell until Sunday afternoon when his father spotted a monkey outside their home. Upon dialing the device, he heard it ringing nearby and discovered the dirty phone on some leaves beneath a tree.

His uncle reportedly joked that the phone might contain evidence of the thief before they discovered the photo gallery was “full of monkey photos,” Zackrydz said. He suspects that the furry burglar nabbed his phone after entering the house through his brother’s open bedroom window.

Meanwhile, the primatological photo op has social media going apes–t.

“Smart monkey with smart phone,” quipped one Twitter apocalypticist about the “2001: A Space Odyssey”-evoking incident. “Soon, genius intelligent monkeys learn artificial intelligence machine. We are reaching 2021.”

However, some found the scenario a bit suspect, with one Twitter user wondering how the ape managed to open a device that comes equipped with facial recognition software.

This isn’t the first time a simian selfie has caused a kerfuffle. An Indonesian crested macaque named Naruto sparked a major copyright lawsuit after using a photographer’s camera to snap a series of now-viral self-portraits. It was eventually ruled that the monkey couldn’t be declared the rightful owner of the photos.