4 Heart-Warming Unusual Interspecies Friendships

We often see animals hunt each other in documentaries or nature shows, but a few of documented cases actually show a much softer side to wild animals, especially when a wild animal known to be a top predator develops an uncommon friendship towards an animal that they’d usually consider prey.

Here are of the most uncommon animal friendship that was documented.

Bella the Labrador and Bubbles the African Elephant

Bubbles might be ten times bigger than Bella, but these two have become an inseparable pair. Bubbles was flown to a reserve in the United Sates after being rescued from poachers. Bella was owned by one of the contractors who worked for the reserve. They like spending time together especially near the water, swimming and playing around.

Wilma the Ostrich and Bea the Giraffe

Besides their long necks, these two animals have absolutely nothing alike. Wilma and Bea have become good friends while staying at the Busch Gardens, a park that offers animal encounters with a huge enclosure that’s around 65 acres wide. Although they have all the space to run around alone or with others that are the same species as they are, they willingly spend time with each other.

Sniffer the Wild Fox and Tinni the Dog

Think of the movie the fox and the hound, but replace the hound with a dog that looks like a German Shepherd. Torgeir Berge, a photographer and Tinni’s owner, first met Sniffer when they were out of a walk in the woods. Since then, the two became best friends. Berge took photos of the unusual pair and complied a book called The Fox and the Dog which he hopes can help ban the fox-fur trade.

Bonedigger the Lion and Milo the Dog

Imagine a tiny dachshund taking care of a lion cub. This is how Milo and Bonedigger’s friendship started. The G.W. Exotic Animal Park found in Wynnewood, Oklahoma has been taking care of Bonedigger, a crippled lion that has a metabolic bone illness, since he was a cub. Milo has also been protecting the lion since then. Years later, Bonedigger is now a 500 pound, fully grown lion and Milo still stays by his side along with two other dachshunds, Angel and Bullet.

Shere Khan the Tiger, Leo the Lion and Baloo the Bear

The touching story behind these three animals starts with a rescue and even a surgery. These three were rescued from an abusive drug dealer who kept them as pets. Baloo even had to go through a surgery to take out a harness which grew into his skin, causing deformities. Because of the traumatic experience, Shere Khan, Leo and Baloo became inseparable. They’re now taken care of by the Noah’s Ark Animal Sanctuary.  

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New Bird Species Tagged as Endangered

We see birds flying around the sky every day. We don’t really mind them much, but experts have actually discovered a number of new species of birds, and some of them are already endangered or borderline extinct. A comprehensive list from BirdLife International shows that there have been 361 newly discovered bird species. The International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) keeps track of all the types of animals on earth and sad to say, more than a quarter of the newly discovered species of birds were placed on the Red List of Threatened Species.

According to Stuart Butchart, BirdLife’s spokesperson, one tenth of the entire world’s birds have been living below the conservation’s radar. Sometimes, certain species of birds are mislabeled and are tagged as variants from a single species. At times, some species become so inaccessible to researches that they have a hard time tracking their population and understand how these species mate.

A good example would be ostriches. Until now, there has only been one ostrich species that has ever been recorded. This specie was placed under the threatened list as “least concern”. However, a new assessment shows that the Somali ostrich, scientific name Struthiomolybdophanes, was found in Kenya, Djibouti, Ethiopia, and Somalia. This is now considered as a distinct species and it’s even listed under “vulnerable” in the red list. These ostriches are facing problems with their population because of egg collecting, hunting and persecution.

Researchers and conservationist are now working double time to categorize as much individual species as they can. They also ask help from locals to identify them.

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