When 'mum' is a different species

BY NICK BARNETT

Did you see the news story and video last week about Shyla, the chihuahua who's nursing a litter of kittens? It was one for both dog lovers and cat lovers. It's a great tribute to how different species can get on extraordinarily well together, at least for a time.

It inspired me to find some photos of other inter-species parenting, and there are some remarkable pairings. Helpless, hungry babies are tended to by creatures that are often programmed to hunt and eat them. All of the photos illustrate that eternal search by babies for food and a warm, welcoming place to enjoy it.

But do they illustrate a universal maternal instinct that crosses species barriers? Not exactly. A lot of these baby animals are being nursed by a mum from another species because their own biological mothers have rejected them - a phenomenon that happens in a number of species. Luckily, though, the parental bond can be encouraged to grow elsewhere.

It's a heart-warming thing to see, don't you think? I'm always impressed any case of animals of different species getting on really well, not just to the extent of wet-nursing. I'd grown up thinking that cats and dogs were engaged in eternal hostilities, so when I see my cat and dogs quietly sleeping in a furry continuous row on a couch, it seems like a small miracle.

Here are some cases where "mum" was a different species:

This is a cat who's returning the favour done by Shyla for the feline species. Mimi the cat is playing mum to a litter of what a geneticist's tests confirmed were 100 per cent canine puppies; however, Mimi's owners in Passo Fundo, Brazil, claimed to have seen Mimi give birth to the kit-pups after having mated with a neighbourhood dog. I'll go with the geneticist on this one, as it's less icky to think about. And scientists is so reliable.

Mimi, anyway, seems pretty motherly.

Palma the dog, who already had her own puppy, takes over the mum's role for two tiger cubs who'd been rejected by their mothers at a zoo in Siberia.

Another photo, taken at the same zoo in Krasnoyarsk, Siberia, shows puma and badger cubs being nursed by a dog.

This one took me by surprise: Kit Kat is proxy mum for a trio of squirrels, named Snap, Crackle and Pop, who'd been rescued from a falling tree. Cats are usually much less friendly than this to squirrels. Makes for a high cuteness quotient, don't you think?

This three-year-old puma, named Promise, adopted tiny fox cub Sooty at a wildlife park in England after losing her own cub. Sooty's mum had rejected her.

Tigers are a precious species, but sometimes the young ones are left rejected by the mother. Here, a couple of rejected nine-day-old cubs find solace and sustenance from a pig on a Ukrainian farm.

Have you ever seen an inter-species adoption? Or any other cases of exceptional closeness between pets of different species?

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Pictures: Reuters