Unlikely Friendships : 47 Remarkable Stories From the Animal Kingdom (22 page)

{C
HINA,
2009}

They're extremely precious, these tiny red pandas, and not just because of their high cuteness factor. In the wild, hunting and habitat loss threaten the species with extinction, and
Ailurus fulgens
is protected by law. So the success story of these two panda cubs in a Chinese zoo is sweet indeed.

Red pandas, also known as lesser pandas, are only distantly related to their big black-and-white namesakes. And they're more closely related to raccoons than to dogs, but these two took to a canine “mom” as if she were the closest of kin.

The mother panda had recently been moved from the Shaanxi Zoo to the Taiyuan Zoo in northern China's Shaanxi Province. Beneath her furry plumpness, the bear was pregnant, unbeknownst to zookeepers, and in her new environment she gave birth prematurely. Under the stressful circumstances, the mother abandoned her pups, leaving humans scrambling to find a way to keep the babies from starving.

Caretaker Li Jin Bang acted as surrogate parent for the first few days after the pups were born. Like any good mother, he fed them every two hours, day and night, with syringes full of specially formulated powdered milk. Meanwhile, the zoo turned to the local media for help finding a more appropriate panda substitute. The staff hoped to find a smallish dog that had given birth recently, with plenty of milk and a calm demeanor that would not frighten the new babies. (Dog milk is close enough in makeup to that of pandas that the young would get most of the nutrients they needed without supplements.) Fortunately, a supplier for the zoo who lived on a nearby farm heard the call and brought his scrappy little mixed-breed, who was heavy with milk for her own triplets, to the rescue. One of her own pups came along as well, to ease the transition and keep the mama dog focused.

Quickly the pandas learned to suckle from the canine, and she took to her new job naturally, sometimes even letting the pandas eat before her own pup got access. But the new mom was more than a food provider to the little bears. She treated them as her own, licking them at both ends to keep their bodily functions running smoothly. A red panda mother, who may give birth to up to four blind cubs at a time, will spend sometimes 90 percent of those first days nuzzling her young and getting to know their individual scents. Their adopted mom was similarly attentive when the pandas needed her most. And the bears, their eyes still squeezed tightly shut and their squeals barely audible, responded by slurping up her milk with gusto, growing healthy and strong.

Eventually the pandas were weaned, but for a long time after, their surrogate-mother dog lingered outside the Panda House, trying to get back in. Zoo staff members were touched to see how the dog's protective instinct held strong even after the bears outgrew their need for her care.

For a time, the dog and all of “her” offspring lived together at the zoo, where visitors could marvel at the interspecies group. Once the bears could crawl, Li walked the whole family and let them exercise for hours each day. “The pups—both panda and dog—climbed and played like naughty boys,” Li says.

{Z
IMBABWE,
2007}

A rhino, a warthog, and a hyena walk into the bedroom…the lead-in for a dreadful joke? Nope. It's an actual scene from the Imire Game Reserve in Zimbabwe, where these three species for a time were housemates and playmates alongside a family of humans.

It started with the rhino, Tatenda. For years, Jude Travers and her family had been successfully breeding black rhinoceroses for national parks, an effort called the Black Rhino Conservation Project. This species is extremely endangered, with only about 4,000 animals left in the wild, so every individual is a precious thing. One horrible night, poachers seeking rhino horns, which are highly valued in traditional Asian medicine and as decorative items, stole onto the Imire property and killed the entire herd, even though the rhinos had been dehorned surgically to dissuade just this type of attack. When the Traverses arrived on the scene, baby Tatenda, born on the ranch three months before, was cowering beneath some straw, the only survivor. He was covered in his parents' blood and in shock from the ordeal. The loss of the herd was devastating, but Jude and her family had to quickly set aside their sorrow and anger and focus on getting Tatenda back on her feet.