In a stunning display of evolutionary one-upmanship, Elmer the Elephant at the San Diego Zoo has apparently figured out how to take selfies better than your average influencer. Armed with nothing but his trunk and a stolen smartphone from a careless zookeeper, Elmer has been snapping pics that are going viral faster than a cat video on steroids. Zoo officials are baffled, visitors are delighted, and lawyers are circling like vultures at a buffet.

Elmer's selfies aren't your run-of-the-mill bathroom mirror shots. Oh no, this pachyderm has style. He's posing with dramatic backdrops of his enclosure, complete with hay bales and the occasional confused giraffe photobombing in the background. One particularly popular image shows Elmer winking at the camera while balancing a peanut on his tusk. Social media users are eating it up, with hashtags like #ElmerSelfie and #TrunkTok trending worldwide.

But here's where it gets juicy: Elmer isn't content with just fame. Through a series of interpretive trumpets and what zookeepers swear are meaningful gestures, he's demanding royalties from every share, like, and repost. Animal rights activists have jumped on board, arguing that if monkeys can sue for copyright (remember that famous macaque selfie case?), then elephants deserve a piece of the pie—or in this case, a bundle of bananas.

Zoo management is in a tizzy. "We never anticipated our elephants unionizing over intellectual property," said zoo director Dr. Fauna Wild. They've hired a team of lawyers specializing in interspecies litigation, but progress is slow. Meanwhile, Elmer's fan club is growing, with merchandise like "Elmer's Trunk Selfie" T-shirts selling out online. Who knew animal IP could be this profitable?

Critics are divided. Some say it's all a hoax, that the selfies are staged by clever interns with too much time on their hands. Others believe it's a sign of the times—animals adapting to human tech faster than we can say "artificial intelligence." One thing's for sure: if Elmer wins his case, expect a flood of lawsuits from selfie-taking squirrels and Instagram-famous iguanas everywhere.

As the debate rages on, Elmer continues his photographic spree, undeterred. His latest post? A group selfie with a flock of flamingos, captioned (via AI translation) "Squad goals." Whether this leads to a new era of animal influencers or just more zoo chaos remains to be seen. But one trunk-held phone at a time, Elmer is rewriting the rules of the wild—and the web.