Subcultural engagement for the 21st Century...
Barbelith is a new kind of community (find out more)...
You can login or register.

Underground > Conversation >

Shockingly large animals

Page: (1)2

Tuna Ghost: Pratt knot hero

16:07 / 26.03.04

The gorilla thread made me think of this. You spend enough time around ordinary people, you get used to things being roughly similar to your own size. You may meet someone who is seven feet tall and 300 lbs., but all you think is "whoa. That's a big fella. Biggest fella I've seen in a while." He's big, but he doesn't shock you.

Not like, say, a horse. The first time I really stood next to a horse it shocked the hell out of me. I was next to a horse trailer and it stuck it's head out of the window and gave me a sniff. I remember thinking "holy shit, that thing's head is gigantic. I mean, it's as big as my torso. Wow. What a neck it must have." Imagine how I felt when I stood next to a moose. Those fuckers are giants.

And don't get me started on polar bears. Those things are monsters. They're like three meters long sometimes. Imagine one standing up in front of you, giving you a look as if to say "you know, you can keep your thumbs and your higher brain functions. I'm sure they're very useful in the big city, puny human." I once saw (I think it was a "Too Hot fot TV" tape) a bear knock a man's head clean off his shoulders with one swipe of it's paw. It was madness.

And giant squid! Good god. Imagine an eye that is sixteen inches across. Imagine the eyeball! I want one. The possibility for practical jokes is endless with an eyeball that big.

Doctor: Congratulations, Mr. and Mrs. Smith! You are now the proud parents of a healthy, bouncing baby boy! (gives parents something swaddled in blankets)

Mr. and Mrs. Smith: AAIIIIEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

Am I the only one who is shocked and amazed at the size and strength of these monsters? As it is now, I can't feel any sympathy for anyone who gets hurt by animals while hunting. That's your fault for strolling about where there are moose and bears and gorillas strong enough to dismember you. There was some kid in Kentucky that got mauled by a bear while hunting with his dad. A comedian voiced an opinion similar to my own: "no sympathy, kid. You were hunting. You lost."

Whenever I think about these things, my illusions of superiority slip away quietly and I'm left feeling very vulnerable.

16:11 / 26.03.04

I saw some buffalo yesterday and had the same thought. Damn they're HUGE! How could you shoot them all? You could feed off of ONE for a year!

Moose too! They're a lot more.. solid in real life. Like a walking wall...

Tuna Ghost: Pratt knot hero

16:22 / 26.03.04

Definite props to any wolverine who has taken on a moose. It happens, you know.

Murray Hamhandler

16:39 / 26.03.04

Giant anteaters. Eek.

This thread = rad.

VonKobra,Scuttling&Slithering

16:41 / 26.03.04

Australians.

Now there are some frighteningly big dumb animals.

16:42 / 26.03.04

Giant Anteaters? How big are they?

VonKobra,Scuttling&Slithering

16:47 / 26.03.04

Enormous.

To Ants.

16:54 / 26.03.04

I've got to admit, I was pretty shocked the first time I saw a moose in person. They're bloody enormous.

Better than that though are ELEPHANT SEALS!! You usually only see footage of them on the beach so there's no size reference available. It wasn't until I saw footage of "Homer" crushing cars on TV that I realized how fucking huge they are.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/710686.stm

16:58 / 26.03.04

Homer?

17:11 / 26.03.04

YES, buffalos! I was within fifteen feet of a wild buffalo once. I mean, I knew they were eight feet tall but I don't think I realized... its head alone was about as tall as my entire body!! I was in a car at the time but I felt like the thing could just run right through the car if it wanted to. Subaru or no.

17:11 / 26.03.04

17:13 / 26.03.04

When I was much younger, like about 5 or 6, I went with my parents to the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History in Washington DC. Inside the main gallery/rotunda which branches off to all the other sections (and its a huge museum by anyone's standards, you could spend days in there and still not see everything), there's a stuffed male African bull elephant, one of the largest ever known. I think it was actually shot by Teddy Rooseveldt when he went on a safari, but I'm not sure... Anyways, I recall looking up at this thing in total shock, it was somehow mindblowing to me at the time.

More recently, there's a local guy who owns a dog that's half Rottweiler and half St. Bernard. That thing is HUGE. Funnily enough, I've noticed a lot more big dogs around here lately. I met someone the other day with a Neopolitan Mastiff, they were originally bred by the Romans for war and hunting. I can see why: its built like a lion.

17:13 / 26.03.04

My, but that's a very tiny man!

Tuna Ghost: Pratt knot hero

17:56 / 26.03.04

I can't imagine what it would be like to stand next to an elephant, or a whale or something. It would blow me away. I've spent plenty of time around big snakes (well, nothing longer than 8 feet) and even then I got nervous when it would curl around my neck looking for warmth. It's like a giant tongue, or an arm with no bones, just lots of muscle.

But even a thirty foot snake wouldn't blow my mind like a really big gorilla or a killer whale.

17:58 / 26.03.04

Dupre-that picture disturbed me in a very unpleasant way..

18:21 / 26.03.04

Try diving along at 20m minding your own business when suddenly the dark blob ahead of you materialises into a whale shark...now that is a big shark. Majestic, even. Guaranteed to make you feel very, very small and insignificant.

Makes you wonder though how the biggest things in the ocean live off plankton.

Tuna Ghost: Pratt knot hero

18:33 / 26.03.04

Hell yeah. I wanna be that kind of big. I want to be so big I have to stay in the water and have smaller creatures lazing about around my mouth to feed off whatever doesn't make it into my gaping maw. If I were that big, I'd smoke ciggarettes wherever I damn well please.

18:59 / 26.03.04

The Big Show is a shockingly large animals who can smoke cigarettes whenever he pleases and smash your face too.

Whisky Priestess

19:02 / 26.03.04

I can't get over the picture of the seal. It's the SIZE of a CAR!
I keep thinking it must be a manipulated photo and they're really the size of large cats like I've always imagined.

beelzebub jones

19:07 / 26.03.04

when i saw this thread i immediately thought moose. and to think they have them itty bitty squirrels as friends. by the way i love that picture of that man with the huge cock. i did not know anyone could have a cock that big.

Whisky Priestess

19:15 / 26.03.04

BRING it!

LINK it!

actually I've forgotten how ... but the website is hilarious. www.fatmouse.tk

20:13 / 26.03.04

In a similar vein:

What the fuck are you looking at?

20:18 / 26.03.04

One guy I knew (who was kinda similar in size himself actually) had a cat like that. Sad really.. It makes the whole owner-pet theory frightenly real..

09:32 / 27.03.04

This is a great thread. And that's a magnificently ugly cat. Well done.

09:59 / 27.03.04

Reading my animal encyclopedia recently I was astonished to find out, I quote-

"[Pleistocene era-ish animal the]Glyptodon, closely related to Armadillos was roughly the size of a small motor car"
Armadillos the size of a car. Madness.

Similarly-

"Less well known but equally remarkable were such animals as giant apes and wart hogs in Africa, a giant Lemur in Madagascar, a giant Tapir and Ground Sloth in South America and giant Kangaroo, Wombat and Platypus in Australia. All these became extinct at about the same time [Pleistocene era])."

Giant Platypus. Imagine meeting that on a dark night.

10:04 / 27.03.04

Well, given the appearance of a platypus, if I met a giant one on a dark night I'd probably assume I'd been drinking too much.

10:46 / 27.03.04

10:51 / 27.03.04

One of the (many, many) problems with playing tundra-dwellers with magical powers in online role-playing games is that when I was in a natural history museum, I found myself standing under the tusks of a wooly mammoth skeleton thinking: "...I could take him."

12:36 / 27.03.04

A bunch of us were drinking in a pub garden in Wales. A horse stuck it's head over the fence we were sitting by and just kind of hung out with us. It was brilliant sharing a drink with this giant head nodding like it's the guy in the pub who doesn't say much. Apparently the Pub occasionally has lock-ins with the horse inside, standing at the bar.

Halfway through the horse's time with us it turned around and scratched it's arse on the fence post. Probably thought we were talking a load of shit.

16:43 / 27.03.04

That's amazing. Just one step away from the old Studio 54 "horse on the dancefloor" story..

Slight off-topic digression: I was telling my brother about the horse in the nightclub thing earlier today and he responded "You mean the horse was actually dancing?? Like on it's hind legs?"....and at that point the conversation disintergrated, because obviously that's just the most hilariously amazing concept ever - a disco dancing horse! I mean.. wow.

17:29 / 27.03.04

Best I could do, I'm afraid.

17:50 / 27.03.04

18:33 / 27.03.04

I know web-fu.

20:10 / 27.03.04

The mouse's body looks like the top of a friend of mine's head. Weird.

Huge animals are fantastic. I was once at London zoo standing by the gorilla enclosure. There's an outside part to the enclosure and an inside bit covered with reinforced perspex. A little boy of about 6 was standing right up against the perspex but there were no gorillas inside. He turned round to say something to his dad and this truly enormous mature male gorilla shuffled in, approached the perspex and sat down. The boy then turned round to find himself face to fucking enormous face with the gorilla. Poor boy shat himself, probably literally. It was one of the funniest things his dad and I had ever seen.

22:36 / 27.03.04

Who reckons "Disco Horse Adoptions" has possibility as a band name?

Page: (1)2