The widely reported story of a dog ‘adopting’ a baby chimpanzee.
(With big thanks to Chris Snuggs for sending me the pictures)
As a quick Google search finds:
Two years ago in a Russian zoo a female chimpanzee for some reason repudiated and abandoned her baby chimpanzee. When one of the employees of the zoo took the little chimpanzee home it never crossed her mind that her dog, a mastiff, would become a mother for the orphaned chimpanzee and treat the baby as her own child.
Judging by the look on her face at times, she is not quite sure why this particular offspring has hands to grab her with!
The unconditional love of a dog.
Fascinating example of the power of upbringing.
What is so wonderful, and amazing, is how ‘mother’ accepts this strange looking and strange smelling creature as it’s own. Think how important smell is to dogs!
Words add nothing to the beauty of this photograph.
You can see the huge difference in body mass between these two. One swipe, one bite and the little chimp would be toast! The dog’s love for the chimp overrides all!
Just beautiful.
Mummy, what’s that on the wall?
Mummy, your feet are so big …. and not at all like mine!
oooOOOooo
Dear Chris, thank you so much for sending me these pictures. It’s a privilege to share them with LfD readers. It reminds us that in this difficult era, with so many challenges facing us, that there’s nothing that can’t be solved with love, compassion and understanding.
Learning from Dogs 
Very touching. I pin this on my board at http://pinterest.com/pin/92957179780906468/
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Thanks.
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These are intriguing to me in the question of the theory of mind. Monkey will think itself as a dog, dog thinks monkey is a dog.
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And, by extension, presumably explains how we grow up ‘adopting’ the quirks of our parents. As the ugly expression goes, we are screwed up by our parents so we can go on to screw up our own kids.
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Yes, but the power of the adult is to choose to continue a belief or behaviour of an ancestor, thus the chain can be broken and it will no longer follow through to poison the descendants.
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Oh, so true and so wise. Thank you for that.
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This is a most beautiful story, and don’t you just love those photo’s…. We have MUCH to LEARN from DOGs Paul 🙂
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So much ….
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