Source: ‘I have been taking wildlife photos for over 20 years, but this has got to be my special moment,’ said Mr Dolpire.
‘I needed to work fast as you just do not know when they will move or just flop down and go to sleep. ‘This was just a unique, special moment. No one has ever seen or recorded such a special moment or possibly ever will.’
https://metro.co.uk/2012/08/16/chilled-out-lions-captured-relaxing-in-african-jungle-538687/
In the name of original fediverse content, here’s a little of what I took last year:
Click to see rest:
spoiler
All in Tanzania, taken on this old girl:
They’re unedited; I just exported them to avif with ffmpeg.
The most scared I got was on foot, in front of these guys:
Buffalo do not like tourists. Not at any distance. Our park ranger was casually nuts, in the best of ways:
And even he got nervous around them.
Anyway, my takeaway is that big cats are just… housecats. Unless they’re guarding a cub/kill, they couldn’t care less about tourists, and just lie around and do cat things pretty much like OP’s photo.
EDIT
I offer no context: