All for science

Going undercover:  Scientists can be very odd. Take, for example, boffin Brady Barr, recently returned from a Zambian mission to gather hippopotamus sweat (something to do with suncream, apparently).

A daunting task. One can't just stroll up to a hippo and engage him in idle banter while surreptitiously scraping his armpits for gunk. It takes guile.

So Brady fashioned a bizarre hippo-shaped costume and lay in wait beside watering holes, hoping to harvest gloopy red sweat from passing behemoths.

Sadly, with nary a sample gathered, the mission was deemed a failure. Maybe in Brady's books it was. Depends on your definition of success. Frankly, I'd consider it an unmitigated triumph merely to escape unpulverised. Lest you think me a hippochondriac, consider this: hippos kill more people in Africa than any animal other than man. Had they got hip to his ruse, they would've happily turned him into Serengeti salami.

Hippos are, for all intents and purposes, nature's SUVs. Which got me thinking . . .

I've long wanted to understand the psychology of SUV drivers. How, I wonder, can often otherwise normal, decent people effortlessly adopt the blinkered selfishness needed to drive one? I'll never properly get into the SUV drivers' mindset from the vantage of my car. For a start, I daren't venture too close. Viperous, tiny-brained beasts, you never know when they'll turn on you.

So the obvious thing to do would be to beg, borrow or steal an SUV and observe their behaviour in their native habitat. But that would leave me morally compromised. An anthropologist studying cannibals doesn't butcher pygmies and fricassee their kidneys to better comprehend his subjects, does he?

Then, inspired by Brady's adventures, I had my Eureka moment. I constructed myself a dummy SUV. I sourced a flatbed truck chassis and engine, yanked some wheels off a rusted tractor, pulled the doors from a dozen fridges for use as bodypanels. Finished my creation off by moulding melted plastic garden furniture into the shape of bumpers.

The finished article was a hideous, misshapen contraption. Like a SsangYong. (Photos are en route to South Korea. I'm expecting a lucrative job offer I can easily refuse.)

Venturing into traffic, I immediately became aware of the thousand malevolent stares bearing down on me. Every single non-SUV driving road user was giving me the stink-eye.

This was horrible. I'd expected a modicum of animosity, but I'd thought my SUV would cocoon me. Instead of being immune and/or oblivious to the hatred, I was cowed and ashamed.

I tried to emulate the other SUV pilots bullying other traffic, nudging cyclists into gutters. I even considered parking across two disabled spaces. But I couldn't do it. My conscience sat astride my shoulder, merrily walloping me across the chops with a tyre iron.

I've since come to terms with the fact I'll never be cut out for SUV ownership. I may be many things. But when it comes to SUVs, I'm no hippocrite.