Adorable baby pygmy hippopotamus; don't be fooled

It IS true that the Taronga Zoo in Sydney's new baby pygmy hippopotamus is adorable. It is ALSO true that pygmy hippopotamuses are generally docile creatures that do well in captivity.



DO NOT BELIEVE YOU ARE SAFE. If you are unlucky enough to encounter a real hippopotamus and mistake it for a pygmy, you are as good as dead. Steve Irwin, the crocodile hunter, once said that a sequence he filmed with hippos was the most dangerous he'd ever done. Steve Irwin! If that's not enough to convince you to stay away, you should consider that "[t]o mark territory, hippos spin their tails while defecating to distribute their excrement over the greatest possible area."

Finally, in the grand tradition of Renaissance Europeans completely making shit up about "the Orient", here is a bizarre painting of humans and dogs fighting a hippo fighting a crocodile, or something, I don't even know. By Peter Paul Rubens (click to make it bigger):


The Dutch always do it weirder.

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Warthog vs. Lion

Despite what the Lion King may have taught you, Warthogs are nasty creatures (they're more like Bebop than Pumbaa).

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Cheetah Poops in Some Guy's Jeep

Man, I don't know if I even need to say anything beyond the YouTube description: "a cheetah climbs on a car and takes a dump through the roof"

How majestic of it.

As an interesting aside, that poop probably contained secretions from the cheetah's anal glands, so technically that man and his fancy Jeep now belong to the cheetah. Did you know your cat has anal glands? That's right! On top of that, the cat food you feed him makes his poop too soft to properly drain them. Remember cat owners, it's a good idea to express your cat's anal sacs regularly!


i've been waiting to use anal sacs in a post for a week now

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