naturalpet
INTERSPECIES FRIENDSHIPS
CROSSING BOUNDARIES FOR GOOD by April Thompson
the stray kitten that had appeared in their yard, the couple discovered that another caring being—a crow—had already done so. Over the next few months, the Col-
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litos witnessed an incredible friendship develop between the crow and cat they respectively named Moses and Cassie. The pair romped in the grass, swatting gently at each other like they were born playmates, rather than sworn enemies. Moses often dropped nutritious worms
efore Wally and Ann Collito, of North Attleborough, Massachu- setts, had a chance to befriend
and bugs in the kitten’s mouth, follow- ing it around like a protective parent. “If it wasn’t for the crow feeding
and taking care of that cat, it would have been dead a long time ago,” relates Wally Collito in a video posted at
InterspeciesFriends.blogspot.com. “When the cat would start crossing the road, the crow would holler as if to say, ‘Don’t go in the road, you’re going to get hit.’ Sometimes she would get in front of her and push her back on the sidewalk. It had to be love or friendship.” The story of Moses and Cassie is not an anomaly, but rather an indica-
tion of the potential emotional bond between animals, according to Jennifer S. Holland, author of Unlikely Friend- ships: 47 Remarkable Stories from the Animal Kingdom. “A number of years ago, it was really taboo to attribute empathy to other animals,” she says, “but more scientists today are crossing that line comfortably.” She explains that no one really knows what emotions animals experience or how, although people share the brain’s limbic system, considered the seat of emotions in hu- mans, with other mammals. “There is no reason they wouldn’t have experi- ences similar to ours in terms of basic emotions,” Holland surmises. Holland’s new book is just one of a
growing number of efforts to document the wild landscape of interspecies love, including blogs dedicated to the topic and countless children’s books; one of them, Cat and Crow, by Lisa Fleming, immortalizes Moses and Cassie. “Such stories give us a sense of hope at a time when there is a lot of negativity in the world,” observes Holland. “I think people are looking for a reprieve.”
Mother Love Knows No Bounds
A variety of recent studies by the likes of the University of Cambridge and Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology indicate that empathy and altruism may be characteristics of spe- cies ranging from squirrels to sea lions. Consider the adventures of Finnegan, a squirrel that had fallen out of its nest and into the loving abode of Seattle resident Debby Cantlon. Her pregnant papil- lon, Mademoiselle Giselle, adopted the injured squirrel, pulling its cage close to her own dog bed. Giselle continued to care for Finnegan after she had her own
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Photo: Melanie Stetson Freeman/2006 The Christian Science Monitor
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