Well, it's in Africa, not some zoo... Stands to reason such things happen in wildlife. The pics in question are not sats, really, they are part of National Geographic's areophotography superimposed on some low resolution sats. Maybe NG got word of a dead hippo, and decided to fly over and take a pic...
So the National Geographic pictures aren't that different that most of the images most people post except they are ultra high resolution from having been taken at such a low altitudes. You know they are at low altitude because often people are looking up at the plane and like one posted today, the shadow of the plane is often in the image. http://virtualglobetrotting.com/map/13741/ http://virtualglobetrotting.com/map/16461/
Animals 
http://virtualglobetrotting.com/map/10169/
The sat ones are the ones with the CCD flares:
http://virtualglobetrotting.com/map/9928/
The resolution and shading are quite different.
So the National Geographic pictures aren't that different that most of the images most people post except they are ultra high resolution from having been taken at such a low altitudes. You know they are at low altitude because often people are looking up at the plane and like one posted today, the shadow of the plane is often in the image.
http://virtualglobetrotting.com/map/13741/
http://virtualglobetrotting.com/map/16461/
Check out the Google HQ in Google Earth some time for another example.
http://virtualglobetrotting.com/earth.php?mid=13593