Close call with hippo in Zambia

[Enrique]

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2909345/Is-crocodile-shark-No-s-hungry-hungry-hippo-gets-little-close-comfort.html

There's nothing like getting too close for comfort - just ask the people on board this boat.

Footage taken from a speed boat in the Kafue National Park in Zambia has captured the moment they were chased by a humongous hippopotamus.

The video was uploaded to Facebook by Michael Varndell who is the managing director of a tour company in Malawi called Malawian Style - Safari and Adventure Holidays.

Scroll down for video

[narnian60]

1. Awesome creature.

[Enrique]

2. and surprisingly fast

[frogmarch]

3. Sure, hippos are cute,

but they're dangerous.

http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/1862/are-hippos-the-most-dangerous-animal

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.

On a lighter note: several years ago at the Denver Zoo, my family and I were in the indoor part of the hippo enclosure, and as we turned to leave, mama hippo let loose with a huge spray of poop that shot a good 20 feet in all directions. Amazingly, it missed us, and I think it was because other, less fortunate, visitors shielded us - not because they wanted to, but because we just happened to be on the other side of them.

[NewJeffCT]

4. Not sure how accurate these numbers are...

but, they claim up to 3,000 people die per year due to hippo attacks.

http://www.viralnova.com/animals-that-kill-humans/

[Callmecrazy]

5. That's over 8 people a day...

That seems like an awful lot.