In February 2015, VR Gorilla was invited by Amersfoort Zoo to record 360 degree videos inside animals’ enclosures.

Our main focus of the day was to record inside the tigers’ enclosure. How cool must it be to watch a tiger get at his meal from just a few feet away! Especially viewing this scene in a proper VR headset is pretty impressive!

Our plan was to place our 360 cam inside the tigers’ terrain, close to a bungee cord with a big chunk of meat attached to it. We sort of assumed the tiger would leave the camera alone and go straight for the meat. We also figured the tiger would possibly leave most of the camera intact in case it would go for it..

We were wrong on both accounts! A full grown Siberian tiger will eat our camera like candy, and as it turns out that’s exactly what it tried to do.. Fortunately he didn’t succeed, with thanks to the keepers at Dierenpark Amersfoort who insisted on coming up with a back up plan to pull the camera up into safety from the tigers’ claws. We are very glad they insisted on this, since our camera survived to shoot more videos :P.

All videos have been narrated by Bas Westerweel, except for the ‘Eye of the Tiger Experience’.

Check out all the videos on our YouTube channel, including this making ‘The Eye of the Tiger’ video.