You Might Be a Zombie and Other Bad News - Writers of Cracked dot Com [23]
Will you please stop dressing them in cowboy outfits now?
2. SWAN (CYGNUS OLOR AND SEVERAL OTHER SPECIES)
How cute!
Such poise. Such grace. The way they glide effortlessly across the water. That unmistakable curve to their necks that forms a perfect heart when they nuzzle with their mates, which they will stay with for the rest of their lives.
Oh shit! Run!
Getting chased through a park by a furious bird that will not stop trying to rip the skin off your bones is only funny until it happens to you. Yes, swans are aggressive as hell. The Michigan Department of Natural Resources had to issue a swan warning in 2008 after “rogue swans” began attacking people on jet skis and motorboats. In Ireland, it is not uncommon for university rowing teams to cancel practice because there is a swan in the river. Rowing teams tend to be composed of men who are built like very large trees.
Among the useful information in the Michigan report: Swans will “fly up over and try to keep something underwater if they perceive it as a threat.” Swans cannot be shooed away like mallards, preferring instead to “defend their territory forever.” It’s not all bad news though! Of the many swan species, the only one that hates you is the mute swan, which you’ll be able to identify by its ability to sneak up on you without a sound.
Just like that girl in history class who you thought was the single most beautiful woman you’d ever seen, who you mooned over for months and left little notes for, it turns out swans are now and have always been vicious bitches who will not hesitate to snap your fingers off one by one for daring to pollute their presence before going off to laugh with all their friends about what a huge loser you are.
1. BOTTLENOSE DOLPHIN (TURSIOPS TRUNCATUS)
How cute!
No way. These guys save humans. Every other year or so, some diver or swimmer gets lost out at sea and these adorable creatures bring them home. Hell, in November of 2004 a bunch of these guys banded together and saved three lifeguards from a great white shark off the coast of New Zealand.
This is the only animal in the world that Americans feel proud of not eating. This is Flipper.
Oh shit! Run!
And it turns out they’re sex-crazed thrill killers. How’s that for a plot twist?
For the last seventeen years or so, marine biologists have been finding dead baby dolphins and porpoises washing up ashore, “mangled in unexpected ways.”
The discovery that bottlenose dolphins were occasionally viciously reconfiguring their own children wasn’t really all that much of a big deal. It was what the dolphins were doing to the porpoises that entered the domain of the seriously messed up.
Thirteen-foot male bottlenose dolphins were hunting down and beating porpoises to death and then playing with their corpses, all for no apparent reason. At the time of this writing, the majority opinion in the marine science community is that this breathtakingly savage interspecies homicide is for—and this is science—shits ’n’ giggles.
And then there’s the case of Tião, the male bottlenose that lived off the coast of São Paulo, Brazil, and was noted to be fond of humans. People flocked to the beach to swim or have their picture taken with him, until he suddenly went berserk, injuring a handful of humans and killing a grown-ass man.
Sure, some accounts say the man was drunk and was actively trying to shove a stick into the dolphin’s blowhole at the time. And several locals had apparently first tried to drag it out of the water so they could take a picture with it, maybe first dressing it up with a top hat and monocle.
And here, of course, we have arrived at our lesson: When dealing with animals, you need to forget everything you learned from cartoons. Otherwise, the results can be deadly.
FIVE STORIES ABOUT JESUS’S CHILDHOOD THEY HAD TO CUT FROM THE BIBLE (TO AVOID