Cool Story: Turtle adopts Baby Hippo!

[GangGreen52]

I was on a pet site looking for stuff to get for my neighbor's dog for xmas, and came across this story.

Turtle Adopts Baby Hippo
A 661 pound baby hippopotamus survived a tsunami on the Kenyan coast but loses its mother. The traumatized baby, which normally stays with its mother for up to four years, needed a surrogate mom and chose a 130-year-old male turtle for the role.

The hippo, nicknamed Owen, was swept down the Sabaki River into the Indian Ocean. When the tsunami hit the Kenyan coast, he was forced back to shore. Wildlife rangers rescued the frighten animal and transported him to an animal facility in the port city of Mombassa. Owen needed something to be his mother, so he chose a male tortoise, named Mzee, which had very similar coloring to an adult hippo. Mzee, an Aldabra tortoise, had for years been a loner, but had a soft spot in his heart for the orphan.

"Mzee seems to be very happy with being a 'mother'," says ecologist Paula Kahumbu, who is the General Manager of Lafarge Eco Systems, where the two reside. They swim, eat and sleep together," the ecologist added. "The hippo follows the tortoise exactly the way it follows its mother. If somebody approaches the tortoise, the hippo becomes aggressive, as if protecting its biological mother," Kahumbu added.

The duo has been the subject of numerous children's books which were originally written by six-year-old Isabella Hatkoff and her father, Craig Hatkoff. The stories chronicle their life together.

[CookieJar]

I love when stuff like that happen..they made reference to something like this in the recent episode of The Office.