UKC

Its got to be the bloody dolphin hasn't it.

Everyone's dream is to swim with dolphins isn't it? No mine involves women, cars, international travel on a private jet and shed loads of money.

Stoopid smug fish (I know its a mammal but if looks like a fish, swims like a fish then its a fish)

Closely followed by the Panda

I'm pretty sure that pandas are actually a long con by the Chinese and they are not really real. No animal can be so useless, have no camouflage , no defense mechanisms, has sex once a decade and still not be extinct. They appear to have a collective species deathwish.

In reply to Cú Chullain:

The Horse.........one of the most intelligent animals on the planet...and thick as sh1t with it

In reply to Cú Chullain:

dolphins! efin rapists

Panda's, hogging all the charity money while doing its best to not re-procreate .

In reply to Cú Chullain:

The midge.

I win.

In reply to Cú Chullain:

Amen. Can't understand this fad of swimming with dolphins. Do people dream of swimming with piranhas or jellyfish? They are all fish tough! There is a word for that: discrimination. And dolphins have this ridiculous and disgusting hole on the top of the head - If I paraded in the swimming pool spitting stuff out of my nose, people would call the police. Double standards.

And I don't understand why we want to protect pandas, a species that clearly wants to go extinct. Let them go.

Don't start me on baby seals.

In reply to drolex:


There's a club for people like you.

In reply to drolex:



They make nice coats though, so not entirely useless

In reply to Cú Chullain:
Sheep.


They eat all the trees.

In reply to Cú Chullain:

Wildcats.

They're just fu{king cats, OK?

They look like cats, behave like cats, interbreed with cats, murder and maul small animals like cats, and sh1t in your garden like cats.

Yet people spend time and money trying to 'save' them. There's even a wildcat centre at Newtonmore. It has cats in it. And they aren't even bl00dy well wild.

In reply to skog:

I bet they'd be wild if you tried to pull their tails..

In reply to Cú Chullain:

Nothing worse than the ubiquitous Lolcat.

In reply to skog:


They're also very insistent that those aren't just wildcats, but Scottish Wildcats. I am kind of fond of the plastic ones dotted around Newtonmore though, just in case people don't get to see an actual tabby.

In reply to Cú Chullain:

Surely it's man, no?

(Cannot believe no has offered this yet)!

In reply to Andy Hardy:



Overrated?

In reply to Cú Chullain:
Gorillas.

Enormous, lazy, virtually inert lumps of flesh that sit around doing almost nothing, but are supposed to be worshiped as environmental icons.

At London Zoo, they are terribly proud of their handful of gorillas, each has a name and you can read lengthy plaques telling you all about their individual life-stories. You are supposed to be reverential and fascinated. There are even statues of dead gorillas that have been in the zoo, though to be honest the live ones are about as animated, except that the live ones occasionally eat a leaf.

In the next cage along, tiny monkeys leap wildly from hoop to hoop flying thought the air with reckless abandon and stunning agility, chasing each other and shrieking with wild exuberance. They are pulsating with life, naughtiness and fun, but neither the zoo nor the visitors pay them the slightest attention, all watching awes-struck at the lethargic and normally motionless gorillas.

In reply to Cú Chullain:


Definitely the panda.

An animal which eats a plant so lacking nutrition that it has to live so far apart that it becomes practically impossible for it to breed. Then when it does come to breeding only becomes fertile for less than 1 week each year.

That's not exactly promoting your chances for evolutionary stability.

On top of that it's soooooo cute that everyone dumps money into keeping an evolutionary mid-point alive rather than addressing important things like tigers, rhino or elephants.

In reply to skog:


Wild? I bet they're pretty pissed off that they're in a cage though.

In reply to Cú Chullain:

Other people's dogs

In reply to drolex:


I feel sorry for the dolphins ... I mean all their tuna friends get caught and canned ...

That's what they mean by "dolphin friendly tuna" isn't it?

...

I'll get my coat.

In reply to Cú Chullain:


I heard one talk about wildlife conservation where the speaker expressed those sentiments. he reckoned they would have managed to kill themselves off in 20000 years or so even if man hadnt messed up their environment.
Not sure it went down that well.

In reply to drolex:

Dolphins are mammals. Also, apparently a lot of the time when they swim "with" people they're doing as a way of attracting a mate. i.e., you, the swimmer. Not sure where I heard this, if I imagined it or it was some bizzare dream in which I was educated with this fact.

To weigh in, and pushing the animal definition in the context of this thread, I'm going for the humble human. Supposedly intelligent, they wander round destroying anything and everything for a bit of light entertainment and to avoid walking places. Fail to realise that environmental "resources" (I hate myself for even using that term...) will run out, instead preferring to accumulate bits of paper with an old woman's face on it. Equally some (I'm not picking on you drolex, just using you as an example!) can't even remeber how a common animal is classified.

In reply to Cú Chullain:

Nemo: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0266543/

I mean 8.2??? Come ON! He's just a Clownfish. And his dad. And for a Clownfish, he's not even that funny.

In reply to Cú Chullain:
The Panda has evolved the most sophisticated survival mechanism ever known. Managing to evolve to look cute and totally incapable of doing anything by itself so as to be put up in luxurious accommodation by humans and waited on hand and foot, with viable sexual partners flown in from across the globe.

In reply to Cú Chullain:

Koala

Not only does it only eat one type of food (eucalyptus), but that food is poisonous to it. In order to limit the amount it has to eat, it's evolved to be slow and stupid.

In reply to aultguish:



Look them in the eye! They are the trotting dead. I do not see much intelligence there or much get up & go. A dog far exceeds them for animation, feeling, intelligence & interactivity

In reply to ianstevens:


I don't think the intent is to jump the human they are swimming with. IT is probably more like some wag poncing around with a handbag rat type dog, "ohhh look at the impractical ugly little beast I have in tow. LOOK AT ME." Maybe we make them look more elegant as we thrash around with our spindly non swimming optimised forms.... like taking and ugly friend out with you on the pull.

In reply to Cú Chullain:

Koalas: bloody pointless things. All they do is sit in trees eating leaves until they're so stoned they fall asleep or fall on your head, and when they're awake all they do is piss on your head.
And they're Australian.

In reply to Cú Chullain:

Red squirrels.

All the negatives of squirrels but ginger too.

In reply to Flinticus:

A dog is just a thieving sponger, its like a cat, expects everything on time, all the time. Turn your back and it'll nick your food, chew your new rope, sh1t on your carpet, drool all over your car, leave hairs everywhere, stinks when wet, scrapes its arse all over stuff and shags your leg.
At least when a horse kicks you, it's done with love....and horses are great for getting rid of all those squelchy carrots in the bottom of the bag

In reply to ianstevens:


As a species, we really are quite awful aren't we?

In reply to aultguish:


They do make people happy though.

In reply to Trevers:

Not if your running drugs at an airport tho....lol

In reply to Trevers:


As a species yes, however I am awesome

In reply to Turdus torquatus:

Yes. Whatever your opinion is of the midge, that opinion is too high.

In reply to Cú Chullain:

Boris Johnson

In reply to Flinticus:


And yet billions of pounds worldwide exchanges hands just to watch the bloody things try to run around without fatally twisting a fetlock.

An old ex-miner once told me "it were cavalry at Peterloo and it were cavalry at Orgreave. Horses have a taste for the blood of the poor, son". I don't think he was a fan of the local gymkhana.

In reply to Simon4:

I read one of those plaques, whilst watching a Silverback sitting on a rock eating in Edinburgh Zoo I think it was.

It finished eating,stood up bent over, opened its bowels ONTO its enormous hand he sat back down and began eating again. (Re-cycling! )

The wee boy next to me was fascinated, but his mother less so, and huckled him away.

In reply to Cú Chullain:

Cats.

Not the beautiful and graceful predatory type which live in the wild, but the scraggy, infested, self-serving type which frequent people's houses and gardens and scratch your belongings to death - the type that people fool themselves that they own.

Good for nothing except bringing dead mice into your home - hang on, that's not a good thing is it?

In reply to drolex:


Unless you were a kid. Water next to small children is yellowish and slighty viscose!

For overated animals, i have to go with Panda - nothing trying that hard to be extinct should be prevented.

In reply to handjammer:


The operative word is "dead" (as opposed to, say, chewing up my camping kit or house wiring) so yes it is a good thing. Best if you don't overfeed the cats, though, and they will eat the mouse.

In reply to Cú Chullain:

a vote for the pandas

youtube.com/watch?v=sGF6bOi1NfA&

In reply to Cú Chullain:
The Beaver

I used to have a small holding (in fact I still have!) sometimes it would be visited by a Beaver. I got fed up with it after a while, it would expect constant attention and dribble everywhere. It would often be damp and smell musty for some hours afterwards.

It was often unkempt and had long hair. I took it out for dinner sometimes and afterwards it would be stuffed.

I'll get my coat......

In reply to Jim C:


Eating AND crapping? On the same day? Clearly a hyper-active specimen of the species, probably has the gorilla equivalent of ADHD.

In reply to Cú Chullain:

Obviously the only answer is humans.

In reply to Cú Chullain:

Probably the best thread I've read on here in ages. It amazes me how useless animals can invoke such rage.

In reply to Cú Chullain:

Russian Hamsters

Furry little balls of fury and hell, absolutely pointless to have as a pet. They seem to relish biting anything softer than granite, especially my fingers. The bloody gnawing of everything and with mine as a youngster the constant suicidal tendencies... I found 3 in total that wedged themselves between the bars and effectively hung themselves.

And why did my mother insist on putting them into my room with a wheel that sounded like the space shuttle taking off everytime they went for a run at 3am!!!!!

In reply to cfer:

You need a Python or maybe a Rattlesnake, depends how sadistic you want to be....fast or sloooow

In reply to cfer:


sounds like your mother found them extremely useful animals and would rate them highly.

In reply to Cú Chullain:

Whales. Waste of space [literally]. And a threat to our great cross-channel ferries and noble fisher people.

In reply to Cú Chullain:

Ticks. Little smug bastards with such a self-satisfied name and a misplaced sense of entitlement.

And humans, particularly the little scrote who decided to spray paint the nice, shiny, clean bicycle underpass under the A3 last night. Why the hell does he imagine that anyone gives a fig that he was there?

Same same but different?

In reply to Cú Chullain:

glad im not the first to say Humans...

In reply to planetmarshall:

That's also a very good description of my ex

In reply to cfer:
Seconded.
Two of them look cute until you try to pick the feckers up, or worse the kids do! Bity little bastards!
Then they're too small to sex effectively , so the 2 turn to 3 cages of 2 minus the ones they canabilised!

In reply to Cú Chullain:

Wolves . . . . . Or not wolves per se but the ladies of a certain age who wander round supermarkets wearing fleeces ( always brown ) with enormous pictures of them on the back.

When you actually know that if they ever, ever met a real wolf, in the wild.


They would shit themselves.

I sometimes wonder if they are the same people who drive camper vans with similar images.


Like wolves love?


You ain't gonna find any in St. Ives . . . . . Sorry

In reply to coinneach:

But, but the wolf is their spirit animal.

its never a sheep or a cow.

In reply to nathan79:



Beyond all doubt.

In reply to Cú Chullain:
Chester zoo Chimps.
They escaped the enclosure, got everyone locked in the cafe, and didn't even go in for a tea party!

In reply to Flinticus:



My spirit animals are the weasel and the nematode. I find it hard to get baggy fleece jackets that reflect my inner nematode.

In reply to Cú Chullain:

without doubt horses

just cows you can sit on.

In reply to Flinticus:


Mores the point look the women that worship these creatures in the eye! I think I am safe in making this observation as my ex-wife (and total horse-addict) probably does not use this forum. No offence to any one who likes to ride, I'm not at all bitter about being ditched as a husband and traded in for 17 hands of Blagdon Blue, their better at dressage than I ever will be and respond to the whip positively!

But my vote is for the Giant Panda, few virtues just great PR and cuddly camera appeal, how has it managed to survive so long on such a dead-end evolutionary path! The other panda species were doing ok until man comes along and destroys their habitat.

In reply to Cú Chullain:

Letting Agents?

In reply to Cú Chullain:

Can I add dinosaurs to the mix ? Why kids in infants school can name every species of dinosaur that ever lived millions of years ago (and probably have plastic models somewhere) but can't recognise our native species unless they are wearing a tie and waistcoat and talking is beyond me.

In reply to mark s:



You can sit on cows. They even have handlebars.

In reply to Dave Garnett:
You right there Dave.ones with horns are usually nasty and big though

In reply to Turdus torquatus:


I know! As if cats give a sh1t about borders. Maybe these ones are blood-and-soil Nazi hobocats or something. I could get right behind it if it was some sort of civic nationalist any-cat-is-welcome society, where cats from elsewhere were considered full-on proper wildcats as long as they contributed to the group wildlife-carnage and defecation efforts, but, no, they've gone and brought eugenics into it too.

It's like Europe deciding to round up the last few natural blondes from Scandinavia and keep them in a compound in Lapland somewhere, where they're only allowed to breed with each other so they don't die out.



And to those criticising pandas for failing to bother reproducing because they're too busy chewing bamboo, fair enough - but wildcats appear to be facing 'extinction' due to having too much sex, and breeding themselves out. How's that for crappy strategy?

In reply to skog:



Sounds like a more fun way to go than choking on bamboo shoots.

In reply to Andy Hardy:



Nah, the midge wasnt overrated in the first place, so no, you lose.

If you'd have said Midge Ure on the other hand........

In reply to TheDrunkenBakers:


... in which case can I propose the Beatles?

In reply to skog:


I like the sound of this (being blonde). Why limit it to Sandanavia????

In reply to Willi Crater:

Bear in mind that you'll have to put up with us darker-haired "domestic humans" leering in at you through the fences during opening hours.

And you'll have to eat cat food.

In reply to TheDrunkenBakers:



Ha, funny, we have a Midge Ure fan in the house. I got a downvote.

In reply to dissonance:


You heard a panda talk???

Blimey

In reply to SanchoPascoe:

Human beings.

In reply to Cú Chullain:

Dragons.

They're pish.

In reply to Cú Chullain:

Hen harrier..

In reply to Cú Chullain:

cows.

they just look at you with some sort of stupid aggression, like those morons who cant argue so just punch you. Im pretty sure that the smell isn't their crap either, its their brain cells rotting.

In reply to Cú Chullain:

Bats

They hang around upside down all day, pissing up their nostrils, shitting all over themselves and then they only come out at night when you can't see them!

I could think of far better things to change into if I was a vampire.

In reply to Cú Chullain:

Little tw*tty 'decorative' dogs.

Its not a 'pedigree', its an 'inbred', and a useless one at that. Christ some breeds even can't naturally give birth! Plus that are generally yappy badtempered sh*tbags and not even good for ratting.

In reply to Steve nevers: Got to agree - breeding dogs so that they become weaker, die earlier with congenital faults and have breathing/breeding difficulties -would a program of breeding be allowed in humans!! Over my life time German Shepherds have now got a back end that drops down and gives up - why?
Meerkats -no one used to bother with them at the Zoo -now one of the most popular.

In reply to mark s:



Cows are better, you can get milk from cows and race them as well ( check out the racing vows on You Tube)

In reply to Jim C:


Racing vows?? Do they swear not to use their horns or cheese each other off ha-ho-ho

In reply to Jim C:

Mares also provide milk and it's quite tasty

In reply to Cú Chullain:

Koalas.

Job shy dole scum.