Lions captured in up-close photos by remote control camera buggy..

Video shows amusing reaction from eight curious lions in Botswana, Africa, as photographer Chris McLennan of New Zealand clicks away         

 

A pride of lions were lounging around in the shade of a tree in the wilds of Botswana, Africa, minding their own business when a mysterious object rolled their way and stopped. Curiosity aroused, all eight lions got up and approached the odd-looking contraption with four wheels.
As the felines moved in, New Zealand photographer Chris McLennan captured amazing, hard-to-get, close-up photos via his remote control camera buggy, the object of the lions’ attention. Using another camera, he also got photos of the curious lions checking out his 4×4 buggy.
The humorous reaction from the lions is what you might expect playing cat and mouse with the family cat. Perhaps just as amusing is the “whoa” reaction by McLennan and his friends as they viewed the amazing photos the remote control camera buggy captured. McLennan caught it all on video. The action starts soon after he explains how he set up the camera:



As you can see, eventually McLennan backed up the buggy with the lions following. One started chewing on it before another grabbed a wheel by his jaws and ran away with the camera buggy.
McLennan said at the beginning of the video his goal was to “get close to the animal and see if we can get that special shot that you can’t get any other way, and hopefully at the end of it all we’ll get the camera back and have something to look at.”
Fortunately, he did get the camera back and definitely had something to look at.
“That was amazing,” said McLennan, who snapped off photos from a safe distance with the remote-controlled camera. “I think the buggy’s dead, but let’s see what we’ve got out of this.”
The photo at the top is the one that produced a “whoa!” That night, the three sat around a campfire and once again marveled at the photos taken by his contraption he called “Car-L.”
By the way, the buggy didn’t die after all, McLennan reporting on his YouTube post, “‘Car-L’ survived his injuries and is ready for his next adventure!”
We can’t wait.
Photos are screen grabs from the video