After Age’s lovely post about the tiger and the piglets, I’ve found another story to make you go soft and reinforce that if different animal species can find love and happiness together, we should be able to.
Yes I know this is all very sickly and lovely – but as much as I am a cynical little fuck where adland and corporations are concerned – in life I’m quite the sentimentalist.
Anyway before you all start throwing up [including me] lets get on with the story …
A baby hippo, who survived tsunami waves on the Kenyan coast, has formed a strong bond with a giant male century-old tortoise.
The hippopotamus – nicknamed Owen and weighing about 300 kilograms – was swept down Sabaki River into the Indian Ocean then forced back to shore when tsunami waves struck the Kenyan coast on December 26, before wildlife rangers rescued him.
“It is incredible. A-less-than-a-year-old hippo has adopted a male tortoise, about a century old, and the tortoise seems to be very happy with being a mother”, ecologist Paula Kahumbu, who is in charge of Lafarge Park , told AFP.
“After it was swept away and lost its mother, the hippo was traumatized. It had to look for something to be a surrogate mother and fortunately it landed on the tortoise and established a strong bond.”
“They swim, eat and sleep together …” the ecologist added, “… the hippo follows the tortoise exactly the way it followed its mother.”
“If somebody approaches the tortoise, the hippo becomes aggressive as if protecting its biological mother.”
If that doesn’t make you go ‘ahhhhhhhhhh’ then you’re either sick, Andy or Bambi [who used to have the monopoly in ‘sweet animal acts’] so with that, I bid you farewell and I promise I’ll be more cynical, miserable and evil tomorrow.