Robots Enter Lion's Den

National Geographic uses high-tech robots to get the most amazing photos of lions ever seen for their August magazine issue. INSIDE EDITION has a look at how it was done.

It's as close as you'll get to a lion without becoming a meal. A crew uses a remote-controlled robot camera, smack in the middle of a pride of lions. The sleeping lions don't even bat an eye as the robot creeps up on them. The lions are curious about the stranger among them, and one even pokes the robot with its paw.  

In one incredible video the robot sneaks up on the king of beasts, whose date with a lioness doesn't go well.

The remote-controlled robot camera that looks like a small tank was specially designed to get the most intimate photographs ever taken of lions in Africa's Serengeti Plain for the August issue of National Geographic magazine. 

Watch some of the incredible video footage.

They captures a young lion standing on a freshly-killed Zebra, a mother carrying her cub in her mouth and a male lion gets into it with two females by a watering hole at night.

Photographer Michael Nichols didn't want the same old lion pictures, so he employed a range of high-tech tools that took two years to develop so he could get the incredible pictures.

To photograph the lions eating at night, infrared lights were mounted on a Land Rover. The lions weren't bothered by the infrared light, which allowed the vehicle to drive right up to them.

A drone was used to get sweeping shots of the lions at home. The lions would have run away from a noisy helicopter, but the robot camera on the ground got the most spectacular views of all. Similar robots are used to diffuse bombs in Afghanistan. But this one brought us face-to-face with lions in all their glory.