Robert Irwin, the 16-year-old son of Australia’s much-loved and missed “Crocodile Hunter,” Steve Irwin, recently produced a spectacular black-and-white photo of a happy-looking “big, beautiful male lion,” which he took in South Africa and posted on
Twitter on March 6, 2020.
Irwin, an award-winning wildlife photographer, described capturing the lion just waking up from a nap as a light rain began to fall in Balule Nature Reserve. “Looking closely, you can see the little rain droplets falling around him as he happily soaks it all in,” the young naturalist explains on the Irwin-family-owned
Australia Zoo website.
In the photo, the lion holds his head up at the heavens, smiling, eyes closed, and appears to be enjoying the sensation of a shower. “It’s always particularly special to capture the softer side to these animals!” Irwin wrote.
The Australia Zoo is selling 60-by-90-centimeter (24-inch-by-36-inch) canvas prints of Irwin’s photograph for AU$300 (US$195), with all the proceeds going to benefit Wildlife Warriors, the Irwin family’s non-profit organization dedicated to “the protection of injured, threatened or endangered wildlife,” as its
website explains.
While the photo of the “happy lion” has grabbed a lot of attention, this is by no means Irwin’s first successful delve into photography. In fact, though still a teenager, Irwin has “embarked upon many photography expeditions around the globe from the savannah of Africa to the mountains of New Zealand, the wilderness of Europe and everywhere in between,” per his photography
website.
He hasn’t just won fans with his extreme nature photos; he has also won plenty of awards. In 2018, he took a fascinating image called “The Catch” of a giant Huntsman spider eating a frog in a Queensland swamp.
It took Irwin over a month of scouting to get the picture, and, as he wrote on
Instagram, he “was very excited that it is one of the only times this has been recorded.”
The photo was “highly commended” in the London Natural History Museum’s Wildlife Photographer of the Year selection—“the most prestigious photography competition in the world,” Irwin noted proudly.
A June 2019 photo that the then-15-year-old took of an Eastern bearded dragon (Pogona barbata), a spiny lizard native to Australia, received special praise. The photo of the unique lizard, camouflaged on a fallen log in the Ironbark Conservation Station in Queensland, was placed on the shortlist for
Australian Geographic’s Junior Photographer of the Year.
Through his explorations of wild and endangered creatures around the world, the young Irwin is following in the footsteps of his father, Steve, and mother, Terri, who established the family’s fame with their show “The Crocodile Hunter” (1996–2007) on the Animal Planet channel.
Steve Irwin’s tragic death due to a stingray attack on Sept. 4, 2006, left then-3-year-old Robert without his father. Despite the short amount of the time they had together, Steve managed to pass his love of nature on to his son.
Many have noted the striking resemblance between Robert, today, and his father, as a young man, especially after the young naturalist shared a picture comparison on
Instagram showing a photo of his dad and one of himself feeding the same crocodile, Murray, at Australia Zoo 15 years apart.
“Definitely looks like his father and he has the same heart and passion and the love of animals,” one internet user
commented, while another called Robert “the spitting image” of his father. A fitting tribute to the ongoing legacy of the Irwin family and its efforts to entertain and educate people with the wonders of the natural world.
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