Viral videos of the week: Creepy cats, laser cannons and walking on water

12 Dec 2014

This week’s viral videos features creepy birthday cats, the US Navy testing freakin’ laser weapons and a man defies Jesus prior to his birthday by also walking on water.

About 100 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every minute, Facebook videos see over 1bn views per day, and more than 700 YouTube videos shared on Twitter each minute, ensuring there is always video trending on the web.

With so much video available for viewing, we take a look at some of the viral videos that have caught our eye this week.

Cats celebrate other cat’s birthday… with a cool hat

It’s not been a particularly festive viral video list this week as people are far more concerned with the downright creepy birthday of a cat in China and its even creepier owner who somehow convinced Lolita – the birthday cat – and her friends to sit around a table to celebrate the cat’s birthday.

While the hat certainly makes her look the part, the stillness of the cats to obediently sit like that only raises more questions than answers.

Further investigation shows that, thankfully, no foul play is at hand and these cats are just really, really obedient.

 

Uploaded: 04 December 2014

Baby confused by presence of even smaller twins

Babies don’t really know much of anything, really.

They instinctively know to eat and generally just like putting things in their mouth, so the concept of identical twins are likely to cause something of a toddler mind meltdown.

The baby in this case, Landon, is put in the middle of two newly born twins and safe to say, his face shows total confusion.

“I’m seeing double here, four babies!”

Uploaded: 10 December 2014

Submarine Sandwich by PES

This journalist isn’t going to lie, he has no idea what exactly any of this particular video is meant to mean or signify, but still thinks it’s a cool piece of stop-start animation.

While never having thought of putting various sports paraphernalia through a meat slicer and putting it into a sandwich, they still manage to make it look rather appetising.

Although, the thought of eating a load of googly eyes would’nt be a recommended condiment.

Uploaded: 10 December 2014

US Navy tests high-powered laser cannon

Science fiction fans who have dreamed of laser cannons can now rest easy after the US Navy successfully tested its latest weapon in the war against small objects with its un-imaginatively named, Laser Weapon System (LaWS).

Installed aboard the USS Ponce, the laser won’t be blasting destroyers or aircraft carriers out of the water, but can be used to disable drones and light boats similar to the ones used by modern-day pirates.

Siliconrepublic.com actually covered the LaWS back in March and for this journalist, it’s pretty cool to see it in action, even if it doesn’t fire a luminous laser beam.

Uploaded: 10 December 2014

Walking on beautiful clean ice in Slovakian Mountains

Jesus, supposedly, was the only man able to walk on water, but two adventurers in the Slovakian mountains have probably achieved the next best thing: walking on crystal clear ice.

Where pollution has thankfully not affected the lake in the High Tatras mountains, the two seem quite nervous about the whole affair, probably because it’s almost like the sensation of walking on air.

Uploaded: 08 December 2014

You’re not who you think you are

If anyone is having a crisis of consciousness, it would be best to stop reading now.

You know that body you have with all its internal organs? Well it turns out only about 10pc of that can actually be called ‘you’, as the other 90pc are made of over 100trn micro-organisms, knows as the ‘micro biome’.

They may be renting our fleshy bodies but by-god they’re good tenants, keeping us healthy and able to fight off diseases, which is why our obsession with antibacterial soaps and processed foods make us some of the most allergic groups of people in the world.

They have an answer to this however, poo implants … yup.

Uploaded: 10 December 2014

Awesome slinky skills

 The humble slinky: conqueror of stairs, traverser of gravity and now the tool-of-wonder of an Asian street seller who does much more than push it down the stairs.

While little is known of his genius, some (mostly this journalist), say that he was raised by a slinky until the age of 12 where he mastered the art in the foothills of the Himalayas watching his stepfather move gracefully down the mountain slope.

Uploaded: 11 December 2014

A dog goes on a tyre-puncturing rampage

For once, this is a video doesn’t exactly feature much of a visual spectacle, in fact, it offers a laughably-bad animation of a pit bull in New Zealand and its insatiable desire to eats pneumatic tyres.

The news report is really the star of the show here as New Zealand’s TV3 seemingly attempted to re-create the much-loved Taiwanese animations done to represent news events.

However rather than using digital professional tools, it looks like the team went a little under budget and stuck with Microsoft Paint.

Uploaded: 09 December 2014

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Colm Gorey was a senior journalist with Silicon Republic

editorial@siliconrepublic.com