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PHOTOS: This photographer made friends with meerkats, and it's even cuter than you think

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Tuesday, April 15, 2014
Meet Will Burrard-Lucas. He's a wildlife photographer.
He's photographed a lot of scary animals, like <a href="http://www.burrard-lucas.com/gallery/wildlife/africa/safari.html" target="_blank">lions and leopards</a>. During his most recent photography trip, though, the wildlife was a different kind of wild.
Burrard-Lucas spent six days hanging out with meerkats, and they turned out to be more adventurous than you might expect.
"It certainly surprised me how much the meerkats seemed to want to climb on me," he said. "They used me as a lookout post but also they sometimes just seemed to enjoy sitting on me because it was comfy."
Meerkats try to get as high as they can, Burrard-Lucas explains in his <a href="http://blog.burrard-lucas.com/2014/04/photographing-meerkats/" target="_blank">blog post</a> about the trip. This helps them detect predators.
When a meerkat on the lookout spots a threat and needs to warn the others, <a href="http://video.nationalgeographic.com/video/kids/animals-pets-kids/wild-detectives-kids/wd-ep7-meerkatcode/" target="new">it barks</a>. As if they couldn't get any cuter.
While we're sure it was cool to turn into a human lookout post for the adult meerkats, can you guess the part of his trip we're most jealous of?
That's right. The babies.
How do you fit that much cuteness into that little of an animal?
Just. Look. At. Them.
The best part is the 3-week-olds wanted to be friends with him too. "The babies took a couple of days to build up their confidence," he said, "but by the end they were completely fearless of me."
Fearless enough to try to take a better photo? Good luck with that, you adorable budding artist.
Watch Burrard-Lucas talk about his latest (and, dare we say, cutest) project: <a href="http://abc11.tv/1eMNYPC">http://abc11.tv/1eMNYPC</a>
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Meet Will Burrard-Lucas. He's a wildlife photographer.
Photo/Burrard-Lucas Photography
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