Unlikely Friendships : 47 Remarkable Stories From the Animal Kingdom (15 page)

Bob was heartened by his mare's nurturing and compassionate behavior, though he expected nothing less of the sweet animal that brought his family so much joy and connected them to the daughter they had lost.

{T
OKYO
, J
APAN
, 2007}

One's up, one's down. The agile squirrel monkey leaps from tree to tree above; the capybara, South America's largest rodent (a sort of oversize guinea pig), moves through the grasses or wallows in a stream below. Zoos in different parts of the world have found this pair of animals can get along quite well, even when they meet in the middle.

In some of South America's wildest places, the animals share a habitat—densely forested areas near bodies of water. So it might not be totally unnatural for them to come face to face in nature. Conveniently for a zoo setting, there's no competition for space. Each fills a different niche. Remember: one up, one down. But in close quarters, some strange things happen.

While no one trekking through the Amazon River Basin has ever reported monkeys riding capybaras or chasing them and grabbing at their feet, that's what goes on at the Tobu Zoo near Tokyo, Japan. The monkeys have even been said to use the rodents as step stools to reach the trees, to take naps on their backs, and to “kiss” the rodents on their giant heads.

“Sometimes a squirrel monkey will pry open a capybara's mouth as if to say, ‘What are you eating?'” says head zookeeper Yasuhiro Shimo. “Capybaras are gentle animals and seem mostly disinterested. The monkeys, on the other hand, are very physical and act playfully.” Only occasionally “the capybara might get annoyed and shake himself to get the monkey off his back.”

Though their energy levels suggest that they are complete opposites, with the monkey frantic and fast—leaping more than six feet between skinny branches—and the capybara slow and steady, these species actually share some key traits. Both are social types who live in groups of up to one hundred of their own kind. Both have a taste for fruit (though the monkeys munch insects as well), and both are quite vocal—monkeys “chucking” to their young or mates and shrieking if under threat, and the rodents purring, barking, squealing, and grunting as the situation demands.

Yet, despite some similarities, mixing these species doesn't always go smoothly. Another Japanese zoo that combines the two had an incident years ago when a monkey startled a capybara, and the rodent unfortunately struck out defensively, killing the monkey with a bite to the neck. However, zoo managers believe it was a onetime thing, as they hadn't seen aggression between the animals before or since. Mostly, everyone gets along fine.

And at Tobu, the monkey–rodent exhibit is a visitor favorite. “Watching the interactions between the mellow capybara and the impish squirrel monkey, it is hard not to smile,” the keeper says. “Viewers especially love the ‘capybara taxi' taking the monkey for a ride.”

{FLORIDA, U.S.A., 2010}

Unless you're up your ungulates, which most of us aren't, you might not know exactly what a mouflon is. It sounds like a hairdo. And an eland? Anyone?

Turns out a mouflon is the smallest of the wild horned sheep. It hides away in steep mountainous woodlands in places like Iraq and Iran. The mammal was introduced to various Mediterranean islands and to continental Europe long ago, and more recently to ranches in the United States for hunting.

Then there's the eland, an antelope that hoofs across Africa's open plains. The plant-eater hangs out with sometimes hundreds of its buddies, though it doesn't seem to establish close ties in the wild and often leaves one herd for another.

But when a male mouflon met a female eland more than fifteen years ago at the Lion Country Safari Park in Palm Beach County, Florida, a close tie was inevitable. It was the beginning of an ongoing boy-meets-girl love story, says the park's wildlife director Terry Wolf, “that is, if you believe animals can love and not just lust!”