I'm extremely disappointed that the court hasn't already thrown this out and fined the PETA legal team for filing a frivolous lawsuit. This is far beyond "ridiculous." Our courts have enough real work to do without being clogged up with *expletive deleted*it like this.
Have you read the actual case? It's actually an interesting question, legally speaking. Which is why it hasn't been thrown out.
In the case of the selfie, the problem that the photographer had is that
he didn't take the photograph, intend for the photograph to be taken, etc...
The monkey stole the camera and took the picture himself.
If the photographer had knowingly given the monkey the camera* intending for pictures to be taken, then it'd be a settled question. Same with automatically triggered game cameras and such. As is, the only claim the photographer has is that it was his own camera. If a human child had stolen the camera and selfied themselves, the child would own the copyright, despite the camera not being theirs.
It'd be like, oh, finding a piece of termite chewed wood out in the forest and claiming that you own the copyright for the wood, not the picture you took of it.
*Perhaps one less valuable, more armored, video recording**, a more big obvious button, etc...
**So you get all the angles the camera was held at.