Roger and Pat de la Harpe Photography and Africa Imagery Photo Library

A few years ago, while in the Kalahari shooting for our book, In Search of the African Lion, we spotted three lionesses walking down a track along the fence line of the game reserve where we were working. We put our Gopro (attached to a tiny tripod) down in the road, hoping to get some footage of the lions walking past. Little did we know what would happen next!

One lioness made straight for the camera, knocked it over, sniffed it, licked it, wouldn't allow her sister near it and then picked it up and marched off into the veld. We watched with dismay as our Gopro disappeared into the bush, but then as luck would have it, she lost interest and dropped the camera. We mentally marked the spot, drove over in our vehicle and waited for her and her two sisters to move off. It takes an awful lot of looking to find a really small camera in a lot of long grass, but find it we did! And the lioness had dropped it face upwards so it had continued filming! All kudos to one helluva big cat!

This is a re-edited version of the original video clip, improving the colour, sound and timing. As a matter of interest the original clip posted in 2011 has received just over 470 000 views.

Have a look at more of our lion photographs here.