Videos - Giant Giraffe Heads, Bloodthirsty Hippos, Snapping Crocs, and Klepto Monkeys

I am alive!  Thanks to all who were concerned I'd been kidnapped and consigned to forced labor in a Zimbabwe diamond mine.  I had to come back to Chicago to pick up my visa for India and file the paperwork to legally work in Geneva for the month I'll be there in January.

I am about to run out the door to catch my flight to New Delhi via Abu Dhabi, but wanted to get some videos up before I was relegated back to dial-up modem speeds.  I also have some potentially interesting insights from the past week, but that will be fodder for future posts.  Now, to the videos...

Here is me feeding a baby giraffe.

Our tour guide at the crocodile farm was certifiably insane... he was walking around poking crocs with a stick.  Note the absolutely horrifying, jurassic sounds the thing makes.  The guide cautioned us that, "If you're ever near a croc and you hear it making that sound, get away from it."  Clearly he was also an idiot.

And as if we needed some confirmation, he then did this.

Here we intercepted a rhino mom with her baby.  These things run incredibly fast for what looks like a two-ton animal bulldozer.

Here a monkey jumps into one of the tour vans and steals a carton of orange juice, with me pointing out the obvious (a habit I picked up from the croc guy).  He was in there for maybe five seconds max... I was impressed that he knew exactly what he was looking for.

Here I catch a hippo in the act of yawning, though that term really doesn't do the activity much justice.

As you're probably aware, hippos are responsible for more annual human deaths than any other animal in Africa.  For some reason, they have an innate hatred of humans and just like to kill us, according to our boat captain (though they and crocodiles have a treaty of sorts - they don't mess with each other).  I kept trying to get the captain to provoke them so I could see how fast these floating landmasses were in the water, but as we approached this family and the 100+ ton herd started staring us down, I decided that was probably a bad idea.

I thought this baby monkey was adorable, but Maggie thinks he looks like mutant baby born near Chernobyl.

Here's a really cool video of a huge giraffe getting right up in my face.  They really are the most beautiful, gentle animals.  At a different park we went to, I made friends with an orphaned giraffe and he started holding my hand with his tongue (which as you can see are like 1.5 feet long and very dexterous).  I don't have the video of that yet, but one of my colleagues does.

And the last one... you can appreciate here just how massive these animals are.  It makes sense given that their heads are usually like 30 feet off the ground, but it was still surprising.