Young lions being sweet. This is a bit unusual to see. 90% of the time lions do nothing at all. 8% of the time they’re terrifying murder-machines that set our ancient alert system on defcon GTFO. All their other behaviour fits in that last bit. If this seems a weird environment for a wild lion outside India, this is what the bushveld looks like after heavy rains. Kruger is mostly described as, “savannah woodland,” with plenty of large trees. This was in December 2013. ...
Iran has tried members of its cheetah conservation project with espionage. The general coverage by the likes of @franslanting makes it sound like a random paranoid decision. Paranoid it may be. But random it was not. It turns out that, without the conservationists’ knowledge, an American billionaire funding them through his Panthera project was also a funder of a pro-regime-change anti-Iranian government group close to the US govt, the Saudi govt, the UAE govt, and the Israeli govt. The cheetah scientists tried to distance themselves from his statements, but it was too late. Their ties were now suspicious in light of relentless hostility from these nations to the Iranian regime. ...
While I’m going through some ancient pics, this is one I’ve always been fond of. Scanned a bit small. I used a clunky old Takumar 400mm lens and my old Pentax MX with Tri-X film. I’m still interested in making wildlife pics with B&W, though it’s not as original an idea as it was back in 2002 or whenever.