Unlikely Friendships : 47 Remarkable Stories From the Animal Kingdom by Jennifer S. Holland Page A

Chordata
CLASS: Sauropsida
ORDER: Testudines
FAMILY: Testudinidae
GENUS:
Aldabrachelys

SPECIE:
A. gigantea

    HIPPO

The hippo’s yawn is not a sign of tiredness but a show of power. It’s used to threaten predators by showing off the animal’s rather colossal teeth.
    It has fast become one the most famous examples of interspecies friendship ever told. Reptiles aren’t typically known for their warm, fuzzy natures. Nor are hippos.
    The story goes that when the deadly December 2004 tsunami hit the Kenyan coast near the village of Malindi, the waves swept away all but one hippo of a pod wallowing in the Sabaki River. This lone survivor was a 600-pound baby that villagers managed, with colossal effort, to capture and transport to the Haller Park Wildlife Sanctuary in Mombasa.
    Hippos can be aggressive and ill-tempered, even toward their own kind. So baby Owen, named after one of his human rescuers, was placed in an enclosure along with small, gentleanimals like vervet monkeys, bushbucks, and, as it happened, a 130-year-old Aldabra giant tortoise named Mzee.
    That’s when strange and wonderful things started to happen. Owen immediately approached Mzee and crouched down behind him as if hiding behind a great boulder. Mzee moved away, seeming annoyed, but the hippo persisted. And by the next morning, the two had managed a sort of awkward cuddle. Hippos in the wild crowd near each other, but except for mothers and young, they don’t really bond socially. Giant tortoises also hang out in herds without forming any great attachments. The young hippo, perhaps craving motherly attention, found something comforting in an old, set-in-his-ways reptile—a pairing as unlikely as they come.
    Hippo babies usually stay with their mothers for four years, learning how to be hippos. In this case, Owen began learning how to be a tortoise. According to Haller Park’s manager, Paula Kahumbu, he began copying Mzee’s feeding behaviors, chewing on the same grasses. He’d ignore other hippos bellowing elsewhere in the park, and he was most active during the day, which is the opposite of typical hippo behavior but in line with tortoise preferences. The two followed each other around, wallowed together in the pond,and slept side by side, meaty torso against timeworn shell. Owen became protective of his reptile companion and affectionate toward him, licking Mzee’s face as the tortoise rested his head on Owen’s belly.
    Scientists have been most fascinated with how the two animals developed their own physical and verbal language. With gentle nips and nudges to feet or tails, they told each other when to move and in which direction. They sounded off, back and forth, with deep rumbling sounds not typical of either animal. “What strikes me is how sophisticated their mutual communication system became,” says animal behaviorist Barbara King. “It’s a dynamic dance between two species with no preset program on how to deal with each other. And it can’t just be instinct, because one was shaping its behavior to the other.”

{S OUTH A FRICA , 2005}

The
White Rhino
and the
Billy Goat

    WHITE RHINO

KINGDOM: Animalia
PHYLUM: Chordata
CLASS: Mammalia
ORDER: Perissodactyla
FAMILY: Rhinocerotidae
GENUS:
Ceratotherium

SPECIES:
C. simum

    BILLY GOAT

KINGDOM: Animalia
PHYLUM: Chordata
CLASS: Mammalia
ORDER: Artiodactyla
FAMILY: Bovidae
GENUS:
Capra

SPECIES:
C. aegagrus
    The Rhino and Lion Nature Reserve, located on the high plateau region of inland South Africa, is named for two of its most charismatic beasts. Owned by stockbroker Ed Hern, the place in its early years was just an old farm with a modest collection of two white rhinos. It now houses more than 600 game animals representing twenty-five species.
    One of the animals was a six-month-old rhino calf that had been brought to the reserve after her mother was killed by poachers. The calf was spotted cowering by her mother’s carcass,