(Nope: the header pic is NOT Diane Abbott on her day off! This is your actual pygmy hippo – Day Admin)
I have a reasonable recollection of a documentary I watched a couple of years ago. I will admit to watching it through to the end as the presenter was quite a cute Australian/Asian girl.
The crux of her film was the tracking down of the rare, possibly endangered, pygmy hippo, I assumed it was under threat and only her intervention would save it.
The programme involved her and her crew traveling over from Australia and spending weeks at a time in the ivory coast. It took place over two years and involved setting up the obligatory camera traps strapped to trees and assembling a rudimentary, humane, animal trap which had to be inspected by a local wildlife expert prior to it being used to ensure it was not going to injure or cause stress to the highly sensitive pygmy hippo.
Over the course of two years she managed to capture, on film, four images of pygmy hippos, two of which were very possibly the same animal.
Not having seen a follow up documentary I can only hope and pray that these three are still alive and even thriving. Or maybe they’re dead. I don’t feel I need to go over all the reasons that all this is fucking nonsense, much like tracking a family of turtles around the south Pacific on board a spy-grade yacht or spending weeks trying to catch a glimpse of a rare bird/insect/reptile and don’t get me started on the fucking panda and the fucking snow leopard.
Leave them alone you interfering lazy cunts and go and do something useful like put the kettle on.
Oh, and Attenborough, watching a group of animals gang up on, chase down, rip apart and devour is neither educational nor entertaining. It’s not the reality of anyone’s life other than those involved.
Nominated by: Keith Hall
