Hacking Photography - one Picture at a time
Another day, another animal eats a GoPro…or so it seems anyway. This time, it was the turn of a hungry and curious alligator in Florida’s Everglades that decided to see how a camera tastes.
Photographer and filmmaker Bobby Wummer was filming some shots of the ‘gator in Ochopee, Florida. Just to be on the safe side, he had mounted his GoPro on a 12-foot long pole and was making sure he kept it high out of the way. But obviously, it wasn’t high enough.
An almost unbelievable video showing a Florida alligator ingesting a drone has gone viral this week. The TikTok video shows a small drone (the DJI Spark) hovering extremely close to the alligator’s mouth. The alligator, quick as lightning, snaps up the drone and holds it in its jaws. Smoke starts billowing out of the alligator’s mouth, appearing to be on fire.
The TikTok user @devhlanger posted the video clip online earlier this week while on a tour of the Everglades and is captioned “Trying to get a close up of this alligator in the Everglades… Wait till he chews through the drone’s battery.” He then explains “we were trying to get a close up of the gator with its mouth open and thought the obstacle avoidance would make it fly away. It was only the 2nd time using the Spark”. Presumably, the sensitive lithium battery inside the device didn’t take kindly to being eaten by a gator and exploded in its mouth.
Watching some photographers’ behavior in nature makes me wonder – are they into wildlife photography, or into becoming a lunch? This guy was incredibly close to getting bitten by an alligator, but did it stop him from shooting – nope, it didn’t.
YouTube user Ben Boukari posted two videos of this persistent man who was trying to get the shots of an alligator from up close. The animal started chasing him a couple of times, it bit his tripod and lied on his camera bag – but he just went on shooting.
We’re all familiar with alligators and some people encounter them on a daily basis, but despite their healthy population and proximity to humans there’s a lot we don’t know about their feeding habits.
Thanks to National Geographic’s Crittercam, researchers from the University of Florida were able to get unprecedented access to the daily (and nightly) habits of wild alligators and watch them feed.
Much to their surprise, the POV camera also recorded a seemingly narcoleptic alligator.
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