LONDON -- This squirrel will put your upper body routine to shame.
Working out regularly with some hefty 2kg weights in Teddington, south London, the unnamed woodland creature credits his success to commitment whatever the weather.
Actually, the squirrel isn't lifting squat. He's the victim of an elaborate set up by photographer Max Ellis, who creates vignettes in his garden using weights hung on fishing lines and food as bait.
Ellis works at a gym as a photographer so he knew the moves he wanted to see the squirrels pulling, including upright rowing and the single arm shoulder press.
Here are a few of his best shots, which also see the squirrels take time out after their workouts.
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Ellis insists all the images are real. "The squirrels in these images live in the big trees behind my garden," he says. "They come every day to see whats new and investigate it. Photoshop is only sometimes used minimally to clean up the images, (I've used fishing line in some cases) but everything you see here actually happened."
He told Mashable that the shots can take several days to get right. "It takes them a while to get used to the props," he said. He's also given a few of them names, including Squirrelisimo and Chopper.
The full set of squirrel pictures are on Max Ellis' website, where you can buy prints of the images from £20 ($30). He's also on Instagram.