Sean’s loving attitude toward the ray might have surprised a seagoer from long ago. In ancient times, manta rays, with their pointy fins, were sometimes associated with the devil, and sailors told tales of the animals leaping from the water and capsizing boats. Although in truth they are peaceful creatures, it’s not hard to fathom how these legends were born. With power and grace, mantas will occasionally breach the surface and take to the air, if only for a moment or two, before crashing gloriously back into the sea. Nowadays we see that as beautiful—maybe even playful. But 500 years ago, standing on the deck of a creaky wooden galleon, friendship with one of these winged, “horned” creatures would have been the last thing on your mind.
{WYOMING, U.S.A., 1993}
The Donkey and the Mutt
DONKEY
KINGDOM: Animalia
PHYLUM: Chordata
CLASS: Mammalia
ORDER: Perissodactyla
FAMILY: Equidae
GENUS: Equus
SPECIES: Equus asinus
MUTTS
According to many veterinarians, mixed-breed dogs (or mutts) usually live longer and are healthier than purebreds.
Some friendships start out a little lopsided but soon wobble into balance. So it was with Safi the mutt and her buddy Wister, a young male donkey (or jack) with a reputation for sending canines into hiding, not tempting them into play.
The first time the two met, on remote ranchland in Wyoming, Wister was grazing in a meadow and Safi was on a walk with her owner, Barbara Smuts. Safi approached the unfamiliar creature to investigate. When Wister noticed the dog, he ran at him aggressively, then turned and kicked. Safi danced out of harm’s way, then dropped to her haunches to signal her desire to play. But Wister’s temper flared again and his sharp feet shot out. It took three air kicks before Safi got the message and backed off.
But Barbara, a biologist who specializes in the study of animal behavior, was intrigued by her pup’s fascination with this very different species. So on a day when Wister was safely inside his corral, she gave Safi another try at making friends.
This time, Safi raced up and down the fence, and Wister joined in. Up and back they ran, on parallel paths, the dog sometimes barking or growling as part of her rowdy play, the donkey occasionally offering a startling bray in response. Soon Safi began crossing boundaries and testing limits, diving under the fence and tearing through the corral, darting out the other side when the donkey’s attentions got too intense for her.
Then one day after a snowfall, Safi found new confidence and started spending more time inside Wister’s enclosure. “She discovered that she could maneuver much better in the snow than the donkey could,” recalls Barbara.
Finally, the pair was able to play outside of the corral entirely, running around like crazy, nipping each other’s heels and necks, and making mouth-to-mouth contact. They started drinking from the same bowl and napping together. When Barbara and Safi hiked, Wister followed along. And when Wister was put to pasture each day, he’d come looking for his friend. “At 5:30 in the morning, he’d bray outside the door where Safi and I slept,” Barbara recalls. “It was quite an alarm clock. I’d let Safi out to play and go straight back to bed.”
After four months, Barbara’s sabbatical ended and she had to leave Wyoming, which meant Safi had to say good-bye to his friend. “We went back to our regular life, and Safi adapted quickly to playing with her old canine friends,” Barbara says. But Wister, with no other playmates to turn to, suffered the loss greatly. He stopped eating, lost weight, and stood in his corral with his head hung low, uninterested in anything around him. “It showed how truly emotional the donkey–dog relationship had been,” says Barbara.
Concerned for Wister’s happiness and health, his owners finally got him a female donkey (a jenny) for companionship. That’s a very effective way to get an adolescent male mammal’s attention, Barbara says. “Not surprisingly, she cheered him right up!”
{ENGLAND, 2010}
The Duckling and the Kookaburra
KOOKABURRA
KINGDOM: Animalia
PHYLUM: Chordata
CLASS: Aves
ORDER: Coraciiformes
FAMILY: Halcyonidae
GENUS: Dacelo
SPECIES: Dacelo novaeguineae
MADAGASCAR TEAL DUCK
KINGDOM: Animalia
PHYLUM: Chordata
CLASS: Aves
ORDER: Anseriformes
FAMILY: Anatidae
GENUS: Anas
SPECIES: Anas bernieri
The hurry yellowish one that walks and talks like a duck is a duck. But that other one is a whole different animal.
A six-week-old kookaburra—the largest of the kingfishers, native to Australia and New Guinea—was living solo at the Seaview Wildlife Encounter, located on the Isle of Wight in England. “Our breeding pair of kookaburra has a history of killing its chicks,” says the park director Lorraine Adams. Though last year they reared three healthy babies successfully, “this year the female laid three eggs and killed two hatchlings, so we pulled the last one out to save it.” The survivor was quickly christened Kookie.
Meanwhile, the staff rescued a tiny Madagascar teal duckling, unable to defend itself against larger birds, from one of the park’s aviaries. And Lorraine decided rather than keep the duckling in one enclosure and the kookaburra in another, why not place them together for companionship? As an adult, a kookaburra wouldn’t hesitate to eat a little duck, but as a young bird the meat-eater is pretty harmless.
At that point, Kookie wasn’t doing much with his days. “Mostly he just sat in his brooder and waited to be fed,” Lorraine says. “When I first put the duckling in, Kookie just continued to sit there. The new arrival immediately cuddled right up, trying to get under Kookie’s wing to warm up as he would do if his own mother were there.” Though not terribly responsive, Kookie showed no aggression, so Lorraine felt the experiment was going well.
Still, she thought it best to separate the animals for the night. But when she took the duckling away and put it in a separate brooder, “it jumped up and down at the door, wanting to get back in with Kookie,” she says. In the morning, when the two were reunited, the duckling went right back to cuddling with the larger bird.
Since then, two more ducklings from the same mother have hatched, giving Kookie triplets to contend with. “It’s quite an unusual and amazing sight to see three ducks disappear underneath him,” Lorraine says. They don’t share food: Ducklings eat a mix of crumbs and egg, while Kookie feasts on dead chicks, mealworms, and minced beef. But when they’re not busy foraging, the ducks “are all over Kookie, climbing on his back, sitting on him, or poking their beaks into his feathers and pushing their way under his wings.” Kookie stays put like a good babysitter, taking it all in stride.
Kookaburras are known for their call: The birds will throw back their heads and out will fly a high-pitched cackle that could easily be taken for hysterical human laughter. “When the adults kick off laughing, they can be heard all over the park,” Lorraine says. But in youth, the birds have little to say. So far Kookie, despite the circus of activity in his pen, only makes a back-of-the-throat gurgling noise, she says. Perhaps soon he’ll let loose with his first wild guffaw, giving his little teal friends a feather-raising surprise.
{TENNESSEE, U.S.A., 2009}
The Elephant and the Stray Dog
ASIAN ELEPHANT
KINGDOM: Animalia
PHYLUM: Chordata
CLASS: Mammalia
ORDER: Proboscidae
FAMILY: Elephantidae
GENUS: Elephas
SPECIES: Elephas maximus
THE ELEPHANT SANCTUARY
Located in Hohenwald, Tennessee, the Elephant Sanctuaryis the largest natural-habitat refuge in the U.S. designed specifically for old or sick Asian and African elephants.
At the Elephant Santuary in Hohenwald, Tennessee, elephants brought together from different parts of the world tend t
o find a friend among the masses—not surprising for social animals used to life in a herd. Stray dogs, common on sanctuary property, typically ignore the elephants, remaining solo or pairing off with their own kind. Then came a female elephant named Tarra and a male dog named Bella to break the mold.
Stepping over social traditions, these two intelligent mammals found each other, then rarely parted. The gentle giant and the chubby mutt ate, drank, and slept in tandem. Tarra’s tree-trunk legs towered over her canine friend’s head, but the two were content as long as they were side by side.
Then Bella the dog grew ill, and the staff of the sanctuary took him inside to care for him. Tarra seemed distressed and stayed near the house where Bella lay as if holding vigil for him. For many days, as Bella slowly recovered, Tarra waited. Finally, the two were reunited. Tarra caressed Bella with her trunk and trumpeted, stamping her feet. Bella, all dog, wiggled his whole body in excitement, tongue and tail in a nonstop wag as he rolled on the ground.
And, in a most remarkable moment, Tarra lifted one immense foot into the air and carefully rubbed the belly of her friend.
Renowned biologist Joyce Poole, who may have logged more hours watching elephants be elephants than anyone on Earth, recalls meeting the pair on a visit to the facility. “I was fortunate to get up close and personal, to see Tarra with both Bella and another dog she’d befriended. She kept trying to cradle the dogs with her trunk. It was delightful to see.” But to Poole, such a friendship isn’t all that surprising. “We know from our work with elephants, and from our own relationships with dogs, that both animals are very emotional and form close bonds,” she says. In the wild, elephants are loyal to tight-knit groups under the influence of a matriarch. They not only adopt one another’s young, they even mourn their dead. An elephant like Tarra, Poole says, who grew up with a mix of role models and was exposed to other species, “has simply shifted that attachment to another kind of animal.”
Like Dr. Seuss’s famously committed cartoon elephant Horton, who sat in for a wayward mother bird to hatch her egg, it appears that Tarra was “faithful, 100 percent!”
{ILLINOIS, U.S.A., 2010}
The Ferrets and the Big Dogs
FERRET
KINGDOM: Animalia
PHYLUM: Chordata
CLASS: Mammalia
ORDER: Carnivora
FAMILY: Mustelidae
GENUS: Mustela
SPECIES: Mustela putorius furo
Laurie Maxwell is a consummate dog lover. And she isn’t afraid to take on some big ones. Not long ago, two powerful pit bulls and a roll of muscle disguised as a bulldog shared her home. But being of “the more mayhem the merrier” camp when it comes to animals, Laurie decided, why not bring her boyfriend’s pair of ferrets into the mix? The rodents added two bolts of lightning to the household. Fortunately, theirs was a positive energy: Moose and Pita quickly became dog lovers, too.
“They were really rambunctious, flying nonstop around the room,” Laurie says. And while the two pit bulls were relatively calm, the old English bulldog, Brando, “was rough and rowdy himself. Moose would wrestle with the big beast, biting his jowls and muzzle,” she says. “In reply, Moose would steal Bran-do’s toys, sometimes right out of the dog’s mouth, and hide them under the bed. That ferret was a fearless little creature.” The two would play tug-of-war with the dog toys, Brando actually lifting Moose off the ground and swinging him around, the ferret gripping the toy in his jaws. “He loved it; he’d go right back for more,” Laurie says of the flying Moose, whose neck grew thick with muscle from holding on so tightly.
In all the chaos, Winston, one of the pit bulls, was at first terrified of the ferrets. “If he was on the bed and they scrambled up, he would fall off trying to back away from them,” recalls Laurie. But with positive reinforcement, Winston overcame his fear and became the ferrets’ favorite pillow at the end of the day. And Nala, pit bull number two, would follow the smaller animals around trying to lick them, like a coach giving his athletes a wipe-down between their bouts of wrestling.
When Moose became ill and lost the use of his back legs, Laurie’s boyfriend, Jonathan, made him a tiny wheelchair from a shin guard, a piece of wood, and the wheels from a clothesline pulley. Soon the ferret was back to racing around the house and “off road” in the grass outside with Pita, the two chasing and being chased by a trio of dogs ten times their size.
But then, a few months later, it was Pita whose health began to fail, and she turned into a tiny sack of bones, Laurie says. When she began having seizures, Laurie decided to put her “little winsome ball of fluff” to sleep. Before burying the animal, she let Moose see her. “He nosed her, trying to get her up to play. He laid down next to her and rested his head on her neck.” The dogs, too, sniffed at the lifeless creature, uncertain. But their special interest in Moose is what really impressed their owner.
As Laurie later wrote on the website for the Humane Society, where she manages the End Dogfighting campaign, after Pita was gone, the drop in Moose’s once-buoyant spirits was obvious to the canines, who tried to help lift them again. “Our spunky dog Nala licked and nuzzled him relentlessly until he warmed up and playfully clawed and bit her giant muzzle,” she wrote. “The stoic bulldog Brando followed Moose around the house with a watchful eye. And cuddle-loving Winston curled up and napped with the ferret at night.” There was no question in her mind that the dogs, sensing Moose’s distress over Pita, were consoling their friend when he needed them most.
THE END DOGFIGHTING CAMPAIGN
This program, created by the Humane Society of the united States, seeks to educate at-risk youth to the dangers and inherent cruelty of dog fighting, a spectator “sport” in which dogs, usually American Pit Bull Terriers, are placed in a pit to fight one another. Dogs used in these events often die.
{OREGON, U.S.A., 1999}
The Golden Retriever and the Koi
KOI
KINGDOM: Animalia
PHYLUM: Chordata
CLASS: A Ctinopterygii
ORDER: Cypriniformes
FAMILY: Cyprinidae
GENUS: Cyrprinus
SPECIES: Cyprinus carpio carpio
GOLDEN RETRIEVER
Known for its intelligence and affectionate nature, the golden retriever is one of the most popular breeds in the U.S.
Have you ever been entranced as the wind dances over water’s glassy surface and fish move in perfect unison beneath? A nine-year-old golden retriever named Chino found that enchantment in a suburban backyard pond in Oregon a few years back.
The main draw for Chino was Falstaff, the koi—a large, multicolored goldfish related to carp, a species that has been selectively bred in Asia for centuries to bring out both beauty and personality. Now popular in Westerners’ backyard ponds, koi are as gregarious a fish as you’ll find. And Chino was no slouch when it came to social graces.
But no matter how forthcoming, consider the obstacles that these two animals had to surmount in order to show affection. They couldn’t take a walk together, or wrestle, or cuddle, or share a bone. In fact, the only physical contact between dog and fish was one wet nose to another. Yet friends they seemed to become.
Mary Heath and her husband had a backyard pond full of koi. Chino, never particularly interested in other dogs he met on the street, was instead enticed by these unfamiliar creatures and their fluid movement beneath the water. He’d stretch out at the pond’s edge on the warm rocks, watching as the fish circled and descended and rose up to feed.
The dog’s interest grew when the Heaths moved to a new home and built a new pond with a great perch for the pup. Just two of their original fish moved with the family, including the large, tame, orange and black beauty Falstaff. With fewer swimmers to distract him, Chino focused on Falstaff, and the two discovered a mutual curiosity. “They’d meet at the edge of the pond, and Chino would lean or lie down and put his nose in the water,” says Mary. “They’d touch noses or Falstaff would nibble Chino’s front paws.
” She says Falstaff was one of the few creatures whose presence got a tail wag out of the old dog. “The first thing Chino would do when we let him outside was go look for that fish,” she says, “and Falstaff would come right over.” Then Chino would lie flat on his belly for a half hour or more, she says, completely captivated by his water-bound pal.
The fish brain is a tiny thing, and no one really knows whether a carp has the capacity for an experience like friendship. But something brought these unlike animals together day after day. Perhaps it was the food pellets Falstaff knew to expect whenever another species approached the pond. Or maybe the mind of a fish can process more complex concepts than just eat, swim, mate, or flee, especially this type of fish—a genetic far cry from your fancy-tailed carnival prize. In parts of Asia, koi, with their regal beauty, smarts, and strength, represent the ability to overcome adversity and move forward with great courage. For some, they are also symbols of good fortune.
And the golden retriever, well, whatever the brain power, it’s hard to find one without a lolling tongue and curious nature, ready to offer a friendly wag of the tail.
Unlikely Friendships Page 3