I watched Dangerous Encounters with Dr. Brandy Barr early this week. It was on National Geographic which has proven to be the channel that brings me the most entertainment recently. This show was no exception.
Armed with a 200 pound kevlar hippo suit, Brady Barr went undercover in the wilds of Africa to stalk these 3 1/2 ton creatrues. The goal? Collect hippo "super sweat" and study it for protective agents.
Did Brady Barr learn nothing from Steve Irwin and that Grizzly bear guy? Seriously? I'm so confused by people who need to be so close to dangerous animals.
Yes, he was trying to collect their sweat for scientific study, but they had also mentioned that they have already collected their sweat by sedating the animal. I'm no scientist, but it seems to me that this would be good enough.
Hippos do multiple things to show you that you are not welcome on their turff. They fake charge you at first. Which would be more then enough to make me run. They also unhindge their jaw and open they mouth really really big and scary. Their canine teether are up to 28 inches long and according to Brady Barr they can bite through the think skin of another hippo. The most entertertaining thing they do to show aggression is what was referred to as a "dung shower". They explosively relieve their bowels while wagging their tiny tail, spraying shit as far as the eye can see.
So Dr. Barr gets his suit all in order and heads out to hang with the hippos. The first attempt didn't work. The beasts took off, according to Brady Barr because they could smell him. So the only logical thing to do is cover the suit in hippo shit, right?
That's exactly what they did. Picture this. The guy is in a 200 pound hippo disguise, it's 150 degress in it and it's covered in SHIT. What would you do? Probably the exact same thing he did. Vomit and dry heave.
But he didn't give up. No no no. He went back. AT NIGHT. Fucking hell. WHY??????? I can't imgaine the fear of being surrounded by 40 hippos and having your vision impaired.
The sad thing is I don't even remember if he was able to collect the sweat because I spent so much time saying "why why why" and laughing my ass off.
Please watch this if you get the chance. It's very entertaining and even educational. I had no idea hippos were capable of a "dung shower", you learn something new every day.
I couldn't find a video of the dung shower, but you'll enjoy David Letterman talking about it.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
4 comments:
I love watching those shows and hate to say it, but when something bad happens (like to Steve Erwin) I can't help but say..."I fucking told you so."
And why oh why do they want to collect hippo sweat? Do hippos even sweat? Oh, I suppose they do, being so closely related to the horse, but fer cryin' out loud.
You want some sweat? I can give you some sweat, and I won't even make you go through a dung shower to get it.
They want to study it for Cancer research. Which makes me really depressed. Are we grasping at straws here? Has it come down to "maybe" hippo sweat being the cure. I can't believe we are THAT far away.
whoops. wrong log in. Sorry for that.
Post a Comment