Vishal Subramanyan has shared some excellent trail-cam content on his social-media platforms, particularly content starring mountain lions. But the mountain-lion video that has attracted the most attention so far was a bit of a blooper. It shows a mountain lion pouncing on top of his expensive equipment, essentially using a trail cam as a stepping stone to cross a creek. Subramanyan recently reshared the video with the caption: “An expensive wildlife crossing!”
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“The video that got me almost 40 million views,” Subramanyan wrote in the post. “A mountain lion jumping on my DSLR camera trap, using it as a stepping stone to cross the flowing stream. I’d set my camera next to the stream to capture lions moving across the stream, but a huge atmospheric river hit, causing the water to rise rapidly and swallow up my camera. To make it worse, the very mountain lion I was trying to photograph used my camera as a stepping stone to cross the creek. Funnily enough, this video has more views than all of my mountain lion photos combined.”
[RELATED: Caught on Trail Cam: Mountain Lion Takes Night-Time Drink]
In the original post from February 2024, Subramanyan explains that this mishap-turned-viral-video moment occurred in the Diablo Range, a coastal mountain range in California. He called the moment “bittersweet”—”disappointing for my camera to fall in the creek, but quite hilarious to see this video of the lion jumping on the camera.”
Check out the video that attracted 40 million views:
Header stock image by Jorn Friederich/Getty Images
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