Sunday, November 27, 2016

Hippos are not tutu-wearing Disney dancers . . .


. . . as I've had occasion to point out before.  Last week, in South Africa, a motorist learned that lesson anew when he drove rather too close to an annoyed hippo.  The driver's language is unfortunate, but I think it's entirely excusable under the circumstances!





A two-ton hippo meets a one-and-a-half-ton pickup.  Pickup is crumpled.  Hippo is annoyed.

Peter

5 comments:

c w swanson said...

Hippos take no prisoners. They're so comically rolly-polly, people don't appreciate how dangerous they are. When I saw that big old eyeball looking over the hood of that guy's car I couldn't help but laugh, even though the hippo was mashing his car. He's lucky he wasn't on foot.

Rolf said...

Yeah - that's going to make a fun insurance report.

Tangential question: What's with that video style, with a lot of useless side-bar stuff and only a narrow vertical column of useful video in the middle? I see that in a lot of "collections" videos, and I find it utterly stupid. Why cover 3/4 of the video screen with totally useless (and often apparently deliberately unfocused) side-view? It's distracting, wastes bandwidth, increases file-size, and contributes nothing I can see. Is it a standard "feature" of popular vid editing software I'm unaware of, or what?

Anonymous said...

Not a very very happy hippo. (referenceing the game)
Guy is lucky the hippo did not turn over the car on him.
This is what happens when two tons run into another two tons.
Heltau

Anonymous said...

@Rolf
It's because people tend to hold their phones vertically when filming instead of horizontally. The big gaps at the sides of the resulting tall narrow picture have to be filled with something so why not an out-of-focus blown up rendering of the main image?

Bloke in California

Stu Garfath. Sydney Australia. said...

@Rolf.
Though I am a rank amateur photographer of 44 years experience, you have explained the answer with a clear simplicity and perfection.
Simply said, as you did, people hold phones vertically, with the resulting image in 'portrait' style.
Portrait style is for people, and horses with long faces. (insert that very old joke here).
The other style, horizontal, known as 'landscape', is the one style that most phone shots and films (very old term there kids), would be better be shot in.
Class, so endeth the lesson.
Go and do good work.