April 7, 2017 - When curious cats pick up a GoPro, we get an up-close look inside their mouths and their health status. Christof Schoeman, a professional field guide for Tintswalo Safari Lodge in South Africa, plants GoPros in areas with high animal traffic as an unobtrusive way to collect video of their natural behavior. Sometimes, animals like the adult lionesses in this video get curious when they spot the camera. The footage was taken in 2014 at Timbavati Game Reserve, which borders the Greater Kruger National Park. The first lioness is about four to five years old and the second may be a year or two older. Curiosity is pretty typical in adult cats, so it's not surprising that they would pick up the camera and carry it off for further inspection.
Read more about these curious big cats and what we can learn from the close-up footage.Learn more about African lions.Special thanks to lion experts Luke Dollar, program director of National Geographic Society's Big Cats Initiative, and Craig Packer, a National Geographic explorer, who both reviewed this footage.
