Here's why you DON'T want a hippopotamus for Christmas! A lot of animals have their own horror movies. Crocodiles have Lake Placid, piranhas have Piranha, snakes have Anaconda, you know the drill. Well, screenwriters never really stopped to consider what a nightmare hippos are! For starters, hippos are obviously big. They are usually 11-17 feet long, but the males never stop growing. And they might be big and long, but their fuse isn't! They might look kind of goofy, but hippos are one of the most aggressive and dangerous animals in Africa.
To put it simply, they'll attack pretty much anything that enters the water or gets near them. Hell, they might murder you just for breathing too loud.
And they have just the things to do that! Despite being herbivores, they have sharp incisors as well as 20-inch tusks which could easily tear you open. In addition, they have a bite force of 2000 pounds per square inch. That's 1 ton of force, and powerful enough to split a 14-foot Nile Crocodile in half.In addition to their hellish bite, hippos can run at 30 miles per hour. By comparison, Usain Bolt maxed out at 27.33 MPH. They can also swim at up to 7 MPH, while Michael Phelps--the world's fastest swimmer--only maxed out at 6 MPH.
Finally, their skin is 2 inches thick, and their muscles and fat are thick enough to shrug off bites from crocodiles, and even assaults from an entire pride of lions. Basically, they're too tough for predators to kill. In fact, a lot of firearms are ineffective against them because of it.
So not only can these tubs of lard outrun and outswim you, but you'll basically need an RPG or a well-placed shot to the head to kill them.So what do you think? Does the hippo deserve its own horror movie or not? WHY or WHY NOT?
They have WEIRD ways of celebrating the holidays where you live. And two-inch thick skin could probably be penetrated by an anti-tank rifle; I doubt you'd actually need an RPG. To be fair, it's not like people casually carry those around, but if you're poaching for meat, you'd get a lot more usable stuff with the rifle. Probably harder to use, though. Also, 2,000 PSI is NOT a ton of force; it's a ton of PRESSURE- the common brown rat has a bite rated at 24,000 PSI, because a smaller surface area increases it. You'd measure bite STRENGTH in pounds of force.
All that said, yes, you could make an interesting horror movie about them. Their reputation comes from their apparent docility and cow-like shape; used correctly, that would only make them scarier.
I think with all the reasons you have given eg. Tusks that could rip you apart, a horror movie could be made about hippos. I don’t think however it would be too scary when you see their big round bodies plodding along, that may make it a “B grade” horror movie, might not be scary enough for some.
She doesn’t have an opinion on them so far as she hasn’t got to work with them yet. She’s about to go back on placement and work with birds… I bet some of them will deserve their own horror movie, as most people get scared of birds lol
If she still works at a zoo, I strongly reccomend she works with Shoebills. Shoebills look kinda scary--especially when staring--but they're actually really friendly towards humans. In fact, they'll even bond with their caretakers and walk over to them to greet them.
My daughter says Komodo dragons do deserve their own horror movie because they can be SAVAGE! By the way there are Shoebills at her zoo she said and she’ll get to work with them in a couple of weeks.
To be fair, if you were surrounded by nothing but miles of ops (hyenas, lions, crocodiles, rhinos, zebras, elephants, other hippos, etc), you'd be better off with a thorn up your ass.
