This photo is made from about four different photos. I couldn’t quite get the exact photo I wanted at the resolution I desired with a single shot, so I zoomed in to get a variety of shots to stitch together later. If you zoom in to the full resolution, you’ll be able to see all the cool detail on those amazing elephants.
My friend Rene sent this to me… close your eyes and use headphones! 🙂
These guys look pretty docile but you don’t want to get on their bad side. Some of you may know this already, but the more forward-facing the eyes are (like a wolf), the more of a predator they are. The more the eyes are on the side (like a horse), the more they are often prey. So this will give you a pretty good idea what side of the equation the baboon is on! 🙂
If you haven’t gotten my New Tutorial, which is currently on sale, then you’re really missing out! Here’s a trailer for it:
I don’t know if that’s a mom or dad. I’m just assuming it’s a mom because, if I were a baby, I’d feel like my mom is more likely to take care of me while dad is off rolling around in some mud pit with his friends. You can see some of this footage in the video above!
It’s very rare to see white rhinos in the wild, so we were pretty lucky to see them in Zimbabwe. One thing I didn’t know is that the park rangers cut off all their horns so that they are not attractive targets to poachers. Kinda sad, eh? Seeing a rhino without his horn is like seeing a giraffe without his neck!
The whole time I was there in Botswana, I think I only saw male lions twice, so you can imagine how exciting that was. There was one surprising thing that made photography a little difficult in that these guys can be surrounded by a huge cloud of flies. So I had to spend about half an hour in Photoshop to get rid of all of them… they were just distracting and made the lion look dirty.
I’m trying to turn more people on to this Duncan dude! 🙂
On our second day in Botswana, we were lucky enough to see this mature male lion. The previous time I was in Africa, I didn’t see a male lion for over two weeks. I don’t know if that was just bad luck or what. The guides always say that luck is a huge factor, but it also depends on each game reserve. This one was a bit smaller and the guides already had a really good idea of where these males lounge about during the day.
Man, can you imagine what it would be like to be bitten by an angry lion like that? It’s probably best to stay on her good side. Most of these lions lounge around all day long and never really have many interesting expressions, but if you’re patient enough, you’ll see this once in a blue moon.
I don’t remember who turned me onto this podcast called The Dream (that link is on Stitcher but you can find it on any platform) but it’s great! I’ve never listened to episodic podcasts before… it’s a really interesting deep dive into MLMs/Pyramid Schemes. It’s fun, funny, and shocking! I mean, I knew all of that stuff ahead of time… I know what goes on, but to listen to some of their findings was incredible. She’s a great storyteller too.
It must be fun to be baby lions, I mean unless you are being eaten. These two sisters already had their two siblings eaten by hyenas. The mom (behind them) has to leave for a few hours a day to feed and bring back snacks… sometimes while mom is gone the kids get munched on a bit.
It’s amazing what people carry on their heads here! I noticed they start training the girls quite early with lighter loads. They actually put a little ring on their heads (sort of like a bean bag) that sort of flattens out the surface area so they can put anything on top. We went out to watch the sunset and saw these ladies walking miles back to their homes across the sand. It makes you wonder why people in the modern West complain about doing the laundry.
I thought this little graphic animation was kinda interesting!
https://www.reddit.com/r/educationalgifs/comments/dfwfld/animals_population_comparison/
Male lions may be the laziest animal of all. I just looked it up to confirm and they literally sleep 20 hours a day. It does make me think about the nature of sleep… I think when you sleep, you get into another world. Maybe they’ve evolved so that they can be in that other world way longer than humans. We call it “lazy,” but maybe they actually have a bit more insight into the nature of reality than we do.
