Unlikely Friendships : 47 Remarkable Stories From the Animal Kingdom by Jennifer S. Holland Read Free Book Online Page A

conflicted by two instincts—maternal and predatory. But her mothering won out, and she kept the oryx close at all times, licking it gently and treating it as her own young. And the oryx, apparently having not fully imprinted on its own kind and not aware that this was a predator at its side, wasn’t fearful, and even tried to suckle from the big cat.
    But a growing antelope needs rich, buttery antelope milk in its first few months, which no lion can provide. So the oryx limped toward starvation. The lion refused to leave the oryx long enough to hunt for herself. So she, too, was going hungry, becoming more lethargic with each passing day. As Saba spent time observing the pair, she sought explanations from lion expertsaround the world. But all were puzzled; no such pairing was known in the wild before. Though young lions will sometimes “play” with a captured animal for a time before eating it, this didn’t seem a game. “Kamunyak and the calf are a living paradox…. Their intimacy defies the laws of nature,” Saba said. And both would likely die as a result of it.
    Locals wanted to help the animals, to try to feed them, to preserve the marvelous duo. An attempt to give meat to the lioness failed; she ignored the offering and went back to sleep. But the relationship would soon end. One hot day, with Kamunyak weak and resting in the grass, the oryx strayed out of sight, and a male lion snatched it up and carried it away. Kamunyak sprang up and followed but was helpless to assist. She sniffed the blood of “her baby” in the grass. She crouched down and watched the male devour it.
    The next day, as if snapped out of her strange reverie, the lioness finally hunted again, eating her fill on a warthog and regaining her strength. But she didn’t return to the normal life of a lion. Observers say in the coming months, Kamunyak adopted baby oryxes five more times—all for brief periods—before she herself disappeared from the area, adding to her mystery.
    What lay behind this extraordinary scenario? Saba suggests the lion lost her pride at a critical time in her development. “Her trauma probably fueled her quirky obsession.” Whatever stimulated the big cat’s behavior, Kamunyak remains forever an enigma to behavioral scientists and a beautiful curiosity to the rest of us.

    SAMBURU NATIONAL RESERVE
Situated alongside the Ewaso Nyiro River in Kenya, this wildlife reserve boasts an abundance of rare species, such as the Grevy’s zebra, Somali ostrich, reticulated giraffe, gerenuk, and the East African oryx (the kind of oryx adopted by the lioness in this story).

{C HINA , 2007}

The
Macaque
and the
Dove

    RHESUS MACAQUE

KINGDOM: Animalia
PHYLUM: Chordata
CLASS: Mammalia
ORDER: Primates
FAMILY: Cercopithecinae
GENUS:
Macaca
SPECIES:
Macaca mulatta

    WHITE RINGNECK DOVE

KINGDOM: Animalia
PHYLUM: Chordata
CLASS: Aves
ORDER: Columbiformes
FAMILY: Columbidae
GENUS:
Streptopelia
SPECIES:
Streptopelia risoria
    Off the southern coast of Chine, on an island nestled in the Pearl River estuary of Guangdong Province, the rhesus monkey is king. Several hundred rhesus macaques, as they’re also known, are legally protected, along with pangolins and pythons, in the Neilingding Island–Futian National Nature Reserve, a 2,000-acre wildlife haven lush with mangrove forest. It was there that one of those monkeys made an unexpected feathered friend.
    According to Luo Hang, who heads the animal protection station on the mountainous isle, one day in September 2007, a white dove landed on the ground near the station, and lingered. It seemed to have lost its mate. White doves are often seen assymbols of peace and long life, and Luo and his staff welcomed the animal into their midst. They adopted the bird, which they thought was about three years old, feeding it corn kernels and keeping it in an iron cage at the station. The bird had a metal band around its leg, so