National Geographic's 'Unlikely Animal Friends' Explores Inter-Species Bonds

by Helena Sung (Subscribe to Helena Sung's posts): Sep 26th 2009 @ 1:00PM Filed Under: Dogs, Birds, Cats, Exotic Pets, Pets News

Suriya the orangutan with his BFF, Roscoe, a hound. Photo: National Geographic

There's an orangutan whose best friend is a hound dog; a cat whose playmate is a crow; an elephant whose constant companion is a Chow-mix dog; a baby hippo who pursues a friendship with a 130 year-old tortoise; a lioness who bonds with baby antelope; and the story of Christian, a lion cub purchased at Harrod's Department Store in 1969, who remembers his first owners a year after returning to the wild.

You may have seen them on Youtube, but now in "Unlikely Animal Friends," the National Geographic channel explores these six unusual animal bonds in depth with extensive footage, interviews with the animals' owners and commentary by experts.

Perplexing as the unlikely friendships are, they illustrate the "ability of animals to feel complex emotions," says one expert on the show. Love and compassion, it seems, are not solely the domain of humans: witness other inter-species videos such as the fawn who bathes a cat and the dog who befriends a duck.

The one-hour program, "Unlikely Animal Friends," premieres this Saturday, September 26 at 8 p.m. ET/PT on the National Geographic channel.

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Tags: interspecies friends, InterspeciesFriends, national geographic, NationalGeographic, unlikely animal friends, UnlikelyAnimalFriends

Reader comments (Page 1 of 1)

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#1 Jessica 9-26-2009 @ 11:51PM

This is an awesome video!!! They are so cute together. I know for a fact my 3 cats would attack the crow, they sit in the window chattering and staring with their tales twitching at all the birds that visit the bird feeders to eat. Sometimes I think they are going to go right through the window to get the birds...

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#2 Cathy 9-27-2009 @ 10:05PM

This a long with many others I saw on Miracle Pets
on Pax TV.They also showed people pet saving
their owners lifes cat,dogs,pigs,& birds.

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#3 xdollfacektbbyx 9-27-2009 @ 10:16PM

Awh

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#4 tara 9-28-2009 @ 9:29AM

I had a cat about 20 years ago that was "friends" with all of our doves. We had six breeding pairs of ring necks in an outdoor coup when a storm destroyed it. The doves never left the property though and began nesting in our hanging plants that were on our patio. When the babies would leave the nests, we always feared the cat would get them because they were no longer contained, but she never did. What was really amazing about it though is that this particular cat was an avid hunter. She would only eat the food we put out when she couldn't catch her own dinner on her own. Yet, I have pictures of her drinking from a bowl with two doves perched on the lip of that same bowl. She never "hunted" our doves. She would curl up and sleep next to them. She would play with them, like the cat in the video above. I didn't have a video camera or I would have filmed her too, but I do have plenty of still photos showing the same thing with the doves that stayed on our property. It really is a sight to see...a sort of "lion laying down with the lamb" sort of thing. In fact, I used one of the photos for a homemade Christmas card one year with that theme.