This ingenious way of collecting wild animal footage is used by Christof Schoeman, a 30-year-old professional field guide. By putting a GoPro in the bush at strategic locations, he leaves something that the animals are likely to want to investigate and gets some amazing footage of these majestic animals up close.
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Knowing where to leave the cameras takes experience. Knowing the terrain, the animals he’s trying to capture, and the trails they use from the bush are all important factors when trying to get footage of this kind.
Even if he accurately predicts all of these factors, Christof has no guarantee that the animals will investigate the camera. When it works, though, as in this case, the GoPro can capture some truly unique footage of how these animals behave.
Curiosity Killed The Cat
In this case, Christof told Latest Sightings that he had already spied a group of lionesses “following a well-used game path towards a favourite waterhole”.
Sensing his opportunity, Christof hurried ahead of the lions to set up his GoPro in their path, hoping that one of them might find it interesting enough to investigate further.
He certainly got his wish, as one of the lionesses spotted the camera, and sauntered over to it, giving it a quick sniff before picking it up in her powerful jaws and taking it with her on a journey.
What Big Teeth You Have
Christof said he “couldn’t contain [his] excitement when she grabbed the GoPro and just thought about how awesome the footage was going to be”.
Watching the lioness approach the camera from a viewpoint low on the ground really emphasized her size, especially her immense paws, but when she leaned down to pick up the camera, her huge fangs stole the show.
Carried in the lioness’ mouth, the camera had a perfect view of her lower canines and their incredible size. It’s no wonder lions are considered the king of predators in their environment when they’re sporting fangs like those.
Up Up And Away
It seemed that rather than just being an object of idle fascination, the camera was going to go with the lionesses for a little way as they followed the trail along to the waterhole.
Christof watched the lionesses take the camera with them, eagerly waiting for an opportunity to get it back and see what kind of footage it had captured.
He said that the big cat proceeded to “walk around with it for about 6 minutes,” suggesting that she had some kind of brief attachment to her little camera.
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Just A Toy In Their Games
This sighting couldn’t have gone any better than if Christof had scripted it, as after carrying it around with them, the lioness and her sister began to play with it.
Early on in the footage, they bat the camera around a little with their enormous paws, and having a first-person view of their games makes for some quite kaleidoscopic footage, as well as giving an insight into how it must feel to be a small animal they’ve caught.
Getting footage like this is difficult, and Christof said that although “the lioness didn’t decide to eat or break the camera, the GoPro was full of scratches” from her teeth. It’s probably best for tourists who might not have the necessary experience to stick to filming sightings from the safety of their vehicles.