Category: interspecies love

Seal encounters butterfly

September 2, 2018 • 2:30 pm

Here’s a male seal encountering his first butterfly. He’s in a tank at the Oregon Zoo, and the butterfly was fluttering outside the tank. Mashable explains in some purplish prose:

Kaya, a harbor seal at the Oregon Zoo, became transfixed by a butterfly flying near her enclosure — and it is the most perfect thing I have ever seen.

Senior Keeper Micah Reese captured the moment while cleaning her enclosure, and shared the footage on Facebook last week.

“Here’s something special that made my heart smile today,” Reese wrote in his caption. “I walked down to viewing before our next dive to check out our work after cleaning [the] seal exhibit this morning, and I found Kaya playing with her new friend.”

In the video, sweet sea angel Kaya can be seen following the butterfly as it flies by her tank.

Kaya, completely mesmerized by the butterfly presses her nose up against the tank to get a better look. She even waves at the fluttering bug toward the end of the video, and it’s almost too much to handle.

Well, I wouldn’t call a seal a “sweet sea angel,” but of course I would call my ducks “sweet pond angels,” so what do I know? (I can’t resist pointing out that, in contrast to seals, ducks have wings.)

Animal-human love

October 18, 2016 • 1:30 pm

As the video’s title says, this is supposed to depict wild animals showing love to human beings. Well, that seems to be largely the case (I love the lions and foxes), though many of these animals aren’t really wild but have been around humans most of their lives. I’m also not sure about the love of the gator at 2:30, nor of the owls, which seem to be in Bird Jail.

h/t: Ivan

Cat and raccoon court by the light of the moon (with noms)

May 28, 2016 • 1:30 pm

This video, showing a cat and a raccoon (Procyon lotor) arriving for daily noms, comes from Cat Lovers Community and was made by Ray Tamasovich. According to the description, both are feral (I don’t know if they’re always together in the wild) and the cat always lets the raccoon eat first. I’m not so sure that’s altruism so much as self preservation!

Have a gander:

 

 

Afternoon squee: capybara with ducklings on its back

May 18, 2016 • 2:45 pm

I’ve noticed that the evening news on television always ends on an upbeat note, clearly designed to leave the audience feeling good—and perhaps to tune in the next day. So today I’ll do the same, showing two adorable beasts interacting in the bathtub. The capybara (Hydrochoerus hydrochaeris), is, of course, the world’s largest rodent, and can weigh up to 66 kg (145 pounds!). I’m told they’re good to eat, but they’re too cute to kill. They’re South American and largely aquatic, and so could be on the way to becoming hippo-like, or even whale-like. But on to the squee:

From boingboing, which notes:

“This is JoeJoe the Capybara, enjoys baths and hanging out with baby ducks.”

In addition to his YouTube Channel, Joe has an instagram account and a Facebook page.

That’s a chill rodent.

h/t: Grania

Goose appears to ask cops for help with offspring tangled in string

May 12, 2016 • 2:15 pm

I got this video from several readers, and then found it on YouTube to show all of you. The story is almost unbelievable, and the video doesn’t show the striking part. But it’s still nice.

The bizarre part, as recounted by WKRC in Cinncinnati, is that a mother goose apparently pecked at the door of a cop car to get help for a gosling entangled in string:

CINCINNATI (WKRC) – It’s not a sight Sergeant James Givens is used to seeing, a goose pecking at his cruiser door, but that’s what happened Monday, May 9, and initially the veteran Cincinnati officer thought the goose was simply hungry.

“It kept pecking and pecking and normally they don’t come near us. Then it walked away and then it stopped and looked back so I followed it and it led me right over to the baby that was tangled up in all that string,” Givens said.

The string was tied to a Mother’s Day balloon among some of the litter near Mill Creek. Givens shot video on his cellphone. He and Specialist Cecilia Charron called the SPCA, but no one was immediately available to come out. So Charron took matters into her own hands.

“Well she has a couple of kids of her own and I guess that motherly instinct must’ve kicked in because it was like they communicated. The mother goose didn’t bother her,” Given said. “So Specialist Charron came and untangled it. It took her awhile because it was all wrapped up.”

“I always thought that they were afraid of people and people say they will attack you if you get close to their young’uns and I was just surprised.”

It certainly isn’t the toughest part of the job, but these officers couldn’t turn their backs on a mother and child reunion.

Givens said he recorded it because it’s something you don’t see every day.

The video shows Officer Charron disentangling the gosling. At the end it leaps free and runs to join its mother and siblings. Notice the communication between chick and mother: they are making noises at each other:

One of the readers, Barry, who sent me the link, had this to say:

I’m forever amazed by these types of interactions. In this case, it’s one thing for a goose to squawk or even poke a human in the leg, but to go up to a car? And peck on the window? And then it walks away and looks back, as if to say, “See? Look! Over here: I do have a problem.” So how does a goose “know” that a human might help? How does a goose engage in conceptual thinking, to “know” that a person is in the car? Does the goose have “knowledge” of some kind, knowing that those tall, bipedal creatures get into these moving objects with four wheels? Amazing.

Okay, do you think the mother was actually trying to get help from humans by pecking on a car?

Sunday: Hili dialogue

March 6, 2016 • 6:00 am
Another sleepless night for no apparent reason. I do believe this insomnia will kill me if it persists! At least the weather is gonna warm up: a high of 48°F (9°C) is predicted today. On March 6, 1836, the battle of the Alamo ended in Texas with the deaths of, among others, Jim Bowie and Davy Crockett. In 1902, the football club Real Madrid was founded, and, in 1981, Walter Cronkite signed off for the last time as a television news anchor. March 6 births include Michelangelo (1475), Lefty Grove (1900), Gabriel García Márquez (1927), Kiri Te Kanawa (1944), and Carolyn Porco (1953). Those who died on this day include Louisa May Alcott (1832), John Philip Sousa (1932), Pearl Buck (1973), Ayn Rand (1982), Georgia O’Keefe (1986), and Hans Bethe (2005). Does anybody really care, though, what happened on this day, or any day?
Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili is dissing the staff—and unfairly, because I know that Andrzej and Malgorzata get ready for walkies quite quickly.
Cyrus: I think it’s time for a walk.
Hili: Take it easy, you know how slow they are to get ready.
(Photo: Sarah Lawson)
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In Polish:

Cyrus: Mam wrażenie, że zbliża się pora spaceru.
Hili: Spokojnie, wiesz jak oni powoli się zbierają.

(Zdjęcie: Sarah Lawson)

And look what Gus has done to his box—it’s starting to lean precariously. He’ll soon be needing a new one, and that means a new lamp from Ikea for his staff:

IMG_4367

 

giphyFinally, to see an unlikely but heartening friendship, click on the screenshot below).

Screen shot 2016-03-06 at 4.39.14 AM

h/t: Barry