The website “Animals” at Trove has a post on a rather complex series of events ensuing after biologists put a mock “egg cam” amidst a penguin colony, hoping for some good penguin shots. They got them, but got some other serendipitious shots as well. As they note:
A falcon-like bird was unwittingly turned into a documentary filmmaker during its trip for lunch. At a rockhopper penguin colony, a striated caracara thought it had caught a break when it located the one remaining egg that hadn’t been hatched — but it turns out, the egg hadn’t hatched for good reason: it was a camera in disguise. After a short assessment, the caracara took off with the camera, capturing incredible, swooping footage of the penguin colony from above.
That isn’t the end of the egg-cam’s journey though. After falling from the caracara’s grasp, a pair of turkey vultures descend on it next, sending it tumbling down a hill toward the colony. It’s been a good few months for birds stealing cameras, and if the popularity of the egg-cam is any indication, there should be more incidents to come.
More on the striated caracara (Phalcoboenus australis, a denizen of the Falklands and Tierra del Fuego), can be found here.
And a GoPro capture of cute lion cubs from Chris Bray Photography:
While running one of our five 2-week photo safaris to Kenya in 2014, we attached a GoPro camera to a remote control car and drove it up to a lioness with cubs, stopping at a distance where they still showed no interest, and then jiggled the car around just enough to invoke the cubs curiosity. Two of the three cubs then came over and investigated it for 20min, before growing bored and tired and falling asleep back with mum.
I don’t know—those cubs looks awfully thin to me. They need feeding up.
h/t: P
I believe you’ve posted the eggcam footage before, last February (although that video seems to be offline now).
We’ve also seen lions sniffing robots before (although perhaps not the same one) as recently as December.
Well, the second video is different from the previous lion one, and the old penguin one is offline, so one is new and one is back again, right?
No criticism intended. Just remarking that they looked familiar.
Your point being? After all, any day spent without looking at some lion cubs is a day waisted. Repetition of a good thing is – a good thing!
Thanks — I needed that! Both of ’em….
b&
I like the end shot of the egg cam with the penguins appearing to tell it off.
The lion cubs look like they have adult sized ears on cub sized faces!
I’m sure that Chris Bray is a reputable photographer and had permission to use a toy car to get such footage, but there have been incidents in some S.African Parks of people thinking they can do just about anything to get good film of animals including (I kid you not) sending someone to flush the rhino out of the bushes and sending one’s five year old child over to a group of irascible baboons to get a funny ‘photo bomb’ shot – the last one I witnessed myself. This sort of stuff has become commoner due to Go Pros and their amazing versatility. Anyway, grump over – main point, thanks for these clips!
Anybody who would send a child near baboons has never seen one yawning.
Honestly?
I’d rather take my chances with the cats.
The only large primates I’d be willing to get close to would be the other great apes…and then, only if part of the sort of long, slow, courteous introduction that primatologists do.
b&
Yeah, there was running and screaming and threats and tears from all primates involved. Fortunately no blood though.
It makes me smile to see the same expressions, gestures and postures from big wild cats that I have seen in my pet cats.
I remember hearing once that all cats, wild and domestic, purr at the same frequency. Anyone know if there is any truth in that?