Malaysian man 'finds' monkey selfies on lost phone

A Malaysian man has said he discovered selfies and videos taken by monkeys on his phone after it mysteriously went missing from his home.

Zackrydz Rodzi realised his smartphone had disappeared when he woke up at 11am on Saturday morning.

"There was no sign of robbery. The only thing on my mind was is it some kind of sorcery," the final year computer science student from Batu Pahat in the southern state of Johor told the BBC.

Mr Zackrydz said he failed to find any trace of his phone until Sunday afternoon when his father noticed a monkey outside their house.

On calling his phone again he said he heard ringing from the jungle a few steps beyond the back garden, then discovered the muddied phone on some leaves beneath a palm tree.

The 20-year-old checked his phone’s camera roll straight away to see if there was any sign of the thief, and "boom, it's full of monkey photos."

The montage of selfies showed the monkey from various angles as it explored the trees and other foliage.

In one video it appeared to be trying to eat the device. The primate can be seen staring down the camera against a backdrop of bright green leaves and crowing birds.

Mr Zackrydz suspects the monkey may have entered his home through his brother's open bedroom window.

"Something that you might see once in a century," he tweeted on Sunday.

The last time monkey selfies hit the headlines, a British photographer became embroiled in a two-year legal battle for the photo’s copyright.

In 2011, a macaque monkey in the Indonesian jungle picked up a camera owned by David Slater and snapped a series of selfies.

Animal rights charity Peta argued the animal should benefit financially from the widely shared images because it clicked the shutter.

However, a US court ruled that copyright protection could not be applied to the monkey and dismissed Peta's case.

Mr Slater agreed to donate 25 per cent of any future revenue from the image to charities protecting Naruto and other crested macaques in Indonesia.