The most dangerous animal in the world!!!

[sachmo71]

Someone mentioned a rhino a very serious animal. While they are indeed powerful, noble animals, I submit to you the most dangerous animal in the world is...the hippo. Don't make me bust out the stats. Just look at this picture. And cower in fear.


http://www.hsswp.com/animals/photos/hippo.jpg

[SirFozzie]

Ok.. whoever's taking pictures of Skydog has to stop. First the patriotic underwear bodybuilder pose.. Now this. LET THE MAN BE!

[MikeVic]

Is that a banana in his mouth, or is he happy to see me?

[sachmo71]

That hippo could kick Skydog's ass. And Skydog is a pretty scrappy dude. You can tell by looking at him.

[sachmo71]

Check this out, hippo-food:


Johannesburg - Former Miss South Africa Diana Tilden-Davis underwent further surgery on Wednesday following an attack by a hippopotamus in the Botswana Delta earlier this month.

Tilden-Davis, who won the pageant in 1991, was attacked last Thursday while paddling in the remote northern reaches of the Delta, where she and her husband, Chris, run a safari company, Chris told Sapa.

"She was going down a very narrow channel, when she bumped into the hippo," he said.

"Because it's a low flood period in the Delta and because of the drought, all the browsers are stressed at the moment because there isn't enough to eat," he explained.

"She was paddling in a channel she goes through all the time when she encountered him and he must have been very stressed because he attacked Di just above the ankle with his razor sharp teeth going through her bone and skin."

Following the attack, she was transported to Johannesburg's Milpark Hospital for treatment to the wound and to control the infection.

"Di is doing fine. She is very positive and enthusiastic and I think seeing her daughter yesterday for the first time since the attack made her very happy. We are all just hoping for the best."

He said that Wednesday's operation was to control an infection.

Second runner for Miss World

Tilden-Davis was also second runner up in the Miss World contest of the same year and her career has included roles in the horror film "Howling IV" and the action adventure movie "Captive Rage".

According to writer Doreen Levin, who traced the history of the beauty pageant, she hails from a long line of beauty queens with her grandmother Thelma Fairlie winner of a Marlene Dietrich lookalike national contest organised by the now defunct Sunday Express. Her older sister Janine has also won the Miss South Africa competition, and her sister Leanne has been a finalist.

Meanwhile, instead of a quiet Christmas in the bush, the family will spend the day at Tilden-Davis' bedside.

"She's still in intensive care, so we're just going to relax with her," Chris said.

Kruger National Park spokesperson Raymond Travers said: "Hippos are very dangerous. More people are killed by hippos than any of the other big five in Africa. They come out of the water at night to go into the bush for food and 90% of the attacks take place as they are walking into their feeding grounds.

"People must be very careful and if they're in a park they must stay in their car as a human can't outrun a hippo."




He could have fondled her, or splashed her, or stolen her purse. Instead, he bit her. That's just evil.


Thus, the hippo is the most dangerous animal in the world.

[MikeVic]

Humans can't out-run a hippo??? That's news to me.

[Fonzie]

I'm convinced. In fact, it sounds to me like they pose a grave and gathering threat not only to beauty pageant queens, but to the enitre civilized world. The U.N. has done absolutely nothing about this matter, which has rendered them an impotent laughingstock in the eyes of the global community. Since the UN refuses to act, it falls to us to take action: let's bomb the f*ck out of them hippos! DEATH TO THE HIPPOS!

[Rizon]

One time I couldn't find any porn on TV, so I did the next best thing .. watched Discovery Channel. They were doing a deal on Hippos.

Man, those bitches are MEAN.

And people wonder why so many kids kill each other over Hungry-Hungry-Hippo.

[Fonzie]

One time I couldn't find any porn on TV, so I did the next best thing .. watched Discovery Channel. They were doing a deal on Hippos.

Man, those bitches are MEAN.

And people wonder why so many kids kill each other over Hungry-Hungry-Hippo.

They have cable TV in Antarctica? Cool. ;)

[WSUCougar]

Save the colossal hippo!

(That was for you, Fritzy poo)

[Desnudo]

"her career has included roles in the horror film "Howling IV" and the action adventure movie "Captive Rage.'"

Has included? I'd like to see the complete listing if those are the highlights.

[Butter]

One time I couldn't find any porn on TV, so I did the next best thing .. watched Discovery Channel. They were doing a deal on Hippos.

Man, those bitches are MEAN.

And people wonder why so many kids kill each other over Hungry-Hungry-Hippo.

So, you like whacking off to film of angry hippos?

[Franklinnoble]

So, you like whacking off to film of angry hippos?
Sounds like he's a chubby-chaser.

[sachmo71]

More stats, receivers of dung showers...


Dear Straight Dope:

I've heard more than a few times at zoos and on nature programs that the hippopotamus is responsible for more deaths in the wild than lions, tigers or crocodiles. But no one ever mentions what they do to kill so many people. Lions and tigers attacking people make sense, being meat eaters, but what do hippos do? Could you expose the hidden side of this otherwise goofy looking animal? --- Meg

SDSTAFF Jill replies:

We hear "fat and bald," we think "affable, jolly and placid." But notwithstanding Hyacinth, the hippo in Fantasia, Hippopotamus amphibius is as mean as a viper and a filthy pig besides. The name hippopotamus literally means "river horse" from the Greek (hippos=horse and potamus=river)--quite the euphemism compared to the more accurate Latin Gandulid lagoonus vicioso, or "vicious pond slob" (okay, I made that up).

The hippo, found today throughout sub-Saharan Africa, is considered by many experts, explorers and Africans to be the most dangerous animal in Africa (not counting the mosquito). Crocodiles and cape buffaloes are badasses, too, but nobody seems to have kept an actual body count for any of these species and they don't have belts to notch. They've all killed way more people than Africa's lions have. (A few rogue tigers have killed a lot of people too, but they live in India, not Africa.) The hippo is extremely aggressive, unpredictable and unafraid of humans, upsetting boats sometimes without provocation and chomping the occupants with its huge canine teeth and sharp incisors. Most human deaths occur when the victim gets between the hippo and deep water or between a mother and her calf. I've read descriptions of their ground-rumbling charges--bellowing loudly, swinging their heads like giant sledgehammers, the massive open mouth with slashing teeth and I'm thinking, "This little safari is taking a bit of a bad turn, Elliot."

From "The Dangerous Hippo," Science Digest, LXXVI (November, 1974), 80-86, by George W. Frame and Lory Herbison Frame:

Nearly all of the famous African explorers and hunters--Livingstone, Stanley, Burton, Selous, Speke, DuChaillu--had boating mishaps with hippos. All considered the hippo to be a wantonly malicious beast. Not long ago Spencer Tyron, a white hunter, was killed while hunting near the shores of Lake Rukwa, Tanzania. A bull hippo turned over the dugout canoe from which Tyron was shooting, and bit off his head and shoulders.

And check out this article from a couple of months ago in "Africa News" (www.namibian.com.na/2000/October/africa/00AC8AC795.html) about "rampaging hippos spreading terror." They were attacking boatmen, beating up cows and ripping up rice fields. The herds of "marauding herbivores" had been chased out of Mali already and spilled into Niger, behaving worse than drunken soccer fans.

Hippos weigh up to 8000 pounds and can gallop at 18 m.p.h.--a lot faster than you, I bet. They're more agile than they look and can climb steep banks, but, like elephants, they can't jump. Hippos sleep or lounge around on river banks and in the water most of the day and graze on the grasslands at night. Their skin secretes a sticky pinkish oil that helps protect them from the sun and maybe from infection, too. Most of 'em have lots of wounds and scars (the males commonly beat the living crap out of each other, too), and seeing as they're sitting in a shithole all day--see below--you wonder why infection isn't more of problem for them.

Hippos defecate copious amounts into the rivers and ponds in which they wallow all day and also partake of a charming ritual described by hippo experts as "dung showering." They blow crap mixed with urine all over the place to humiliate their hippo rivals and inferiors and mark the territory around their watering hole, swishing their little tails to be sure to get plenty of coverage at nose level. Cecil described this hippo habit in his diatribe against spraying cats in www.straightdope.com/classics/a1_011.html: "The hippopotamus, for instance, is said to mark jungle trails by excreting a lethal mixture of urine and feces while twirling its tail like a propeller. This may explain the historically sluggish market for pet hippopotamuses."

Lovely, eh? Once I asked Tom Silva, the mammal curator at the Rio Grande Zoo in Albuquerque, why we don't have hippos here and he suggested that routine cleaning of my tropical fish aquariums pales compared to the chore of cleaning a hippo tank, to put it mildly. The Singapore zoo has them, though, with a viewing window on the underwater part of the tank. Hyacinth in her tutu admittedly does come to mind as you watch this big tub-o-lard delicately prance along the bottom like a moon walker. She really is amazingly graceful until she lifts that little tail and lets it blow.

--SDSTAFF Jill
Straight Dope Science Advisory Board




BE AFRAID!!!!

http://www.panix.com/~teej/zoo/pics/hippo-teeth.jpg

[SplitPersonality1]

She really is amazingly graceful until she lifts that little tail and lets it blow.

So many comments...so little time.

[Fonzie]

Those hippos sound like real pricks.

[Blitz]

I'd still rather take my chances with the hippo than pull a chicken leg away from Roseanne Barr.

[Rizon]

So, you like whacking off to film of angry hippos?

With mouths that open up like that, why pass up the money-shot?

[sachmo71]

Because he'll bit your pecker off.

[Fonzie]

Because he'll bit your pecker off.

And that is precisely why we must bomb them. If we don't act preemptively we could wake up one morning to find ourselves a peckerless nation.

[Glengoyne]

Anyone catch the Hippo vs Bull Shark show on that silly new show in Discovery that pits animals against each other in a computer simulation. I looked at it, and said to my wife "The Hippo will mop the floor with the limp body of the Bull Shark". She doubted me, but in the simulation the shark got in more bites, but the Hippo Closed the Deal with it's first chomp. Those HUGE teeth and powerful jaws are pretty frightening.

My daughter saw the Hippo in the local zoo being fed, and she said it just walked to the rail, and a handler just started shoveling lettuce in until it was full. Then the hippo chewed for a few seconds, before opening the mouth back up waiting for more. Other than the meal, the other thing she felt compelled about reporting on was the tremendous amount of crap in his pool.

[BishopMVP]

I thought the mosquito was the most dangerous animal. Or the genetically enhanced rhinocerous with a shark on its back if you listen to Jack Handey.

[Fonzie]

My daughter saw the Hippo in the local zoo being fed, and she said it just walked to the rail, and a handler just started shoveling lettuce in until it was full. Then the hippo chewed for a few seconds, before opening the mouth back up waiting for more. Other than the meal, the other thing she felt compelled about reporting on was the tremendous amount of crap in his pool.

Wait a second...that was your daughter standing outside my window? I'm so embarrassed...

[sachmo71]

I thought the mosquito was the most dangerous animal. Or the genetically enhanced rhinocerous with a shark on its back if you listen to Jack Handey.

Elephant.


Contrary to what most people say, the most dangerous animal in the world is not the lion or the tiger or even the elephant. It's a shark riding on an elephant's back, just trampling and eating everything they see.

[BishopMVP]

Elephant.Doh! I had elephant at first too, then changed it. :) Great quote nonetheless.

[tucker342]

well, you learn something new everyday. I had no idea that Hippos were so dangerous.

[Chubby]

I still maintain it's a rhino about to charge your ass.

[Bonegavel]

Thus, the hippo is the most dangerous animal in the world.
You're not married, are you.

[JeeberD]

So when are we going to the zoo, Sach? The weather has been perfect for that this week... :)

[Blade6119]

YOU KNOW NOT OF FEAR UNTIL YOU HAVE SEEN A SHARK ON A ELEPHANTS BACK, JUST EATING AND TRAMPLING EVERY THING IN ITS PATH....THAT IS TRUE FEAR!!!

[mckerney]

So when are we going to the zoo, Sach? The weather has been perfect for that this week... :)

Sach hasn't taken you to the zoo yet?

[JeeberD]

No. I think he's mad at me for rooting for the Avs in the first round of the playoffs... :(

[Tigercat]

Yea I once saw a discovery channel thing on hippos that showed hippos eating other hippos in the group's children. The poor mother hippos would see it coming, knew the babies were in trouble from the males, but could do nothing to stop the aggressive males from bitting the baby hippos to death. Ever since then I've kinda had a hatred for hippos. The baby eating pricks of the animal kingdom,

[hukarez]

...Curses!

All this time I thought it was the damn monkey all along! With it's beady little eyes, snickering and watching as if plotting something fantastic..

[sachmo71]

No. I think he's mad at me for rooting for the Avs in the first round of the playoffs... :(

Why are you rooting for the Avs?
And I'd love to take you to the zoo, but I have a job. *shrug*