Have You Seen This? Wild animals vs giant mirror

(Caters TV/YouTube)


Save Story
Leer en español

Estimated read time: 1-2 minutes

This archived news story is available only for your personal, non-commercial use. Information in the story may be outdated or superseded by additional information. Reading or replaying the story in its archived form does not constitute a republication of the story.

GABON, Africa — We’ve all seen videos of how zoo animals (and even domestic animals) react to humans and human things. It’s undeniably fascinating to us as we anthropomorphize our hearts out.

French photographer Xavier Hubert Brierre took our captivation a step further. He traveled to Gabon and set up cameras in a rainforest to capture the reactions wild animals had when they saw a picture-perfect and upright reflection of themselves in huge mirrors.

The resulting video is equal parts fascinating and entertaining as elephants, gorillas, chimpanzees, leopards, baboons and even an odd bird or two try to understand the dark magic of mirrors.

It’s hard to say which animal has the best reaction. You'll have to watch to decide for yourself, but you can certainly always count on chimpanzees for entertainment. At first they are leery and bit aggressive, but they end up sitting in a big, diagonal line, watching themselves with equal vanity to the average toddler who just realized what mirrors are.

Personally, I was blown away by the sounds one of the leopards makes at the 37-second mark when it rears up to confront itself. It’s the stuff of nightmares. Well, if your nightmares include being stalked by large cats.

Fair warning, there is a loud noise near the 26-second mark. Adjust your volume accordingly.

Related links

Related stories

Most recent Have You Seen This? stories

Related topics

Have You Seen This?
Martha Ostergar

    STAY IN THE KNOW

    Get informative articles and interesting stories delivered to your inbox weekly. Subscribe to the KSL.com Trending 5.
    By subscribing, you acknowledge and agree to KSL.com's Terms of Use and Privacy Policy.

    KSL Weather Forecast