Animal Heroes

by Ben Holt

  David was admitted to the Royal Alexandra Hospital in Paisley in a very serious condition, and family friends and neighbours were outraged at the unprovoked violence that this poor man – who was a hairdresser and very popular in the local community – had endured. No one knew why anyone would have wanted to attack David, but they all agreed on one thing – his devoted pet Henry had saved his life.

  HUGO

  Andrew Williams learnt the importance of getting to know your neighbours when disaster struck in his home one night…

  Andrew Williams, an engineer, was at home alone in Birch Hill, Berkshire, one weekend while his wife Sarah was away visiting his sister. He was startled to feel a clawing sensation on his face at two in the morning and woke to see a concerned cat staring down at him – especially as he didn’t even own one. The furry face belonged to Hugo, his feline neighbour, who had come through the cat-flap downstairs to warn him that his house was on fire.

  Acrid, black smoke was billowing through his home, but didn’t set off the smoke detector until after he had woken up. Andrew had recently been doing work on his bungalow and had moved the smoke detector to a different spot. Alerted to the danger, he sprang into action, calling the fire brigade and doing what he could to tame the blaze himself. When the emergency services arrived he was treated on site for smoke inhalation, and it was later discovered an electrical fault was to blame for the fire.

  Hugo and his brother Harvey had always been regular visitors to the Williams, who were cat lovers and enjoyed petting the neighbour’s cats. ‘The fire chief said that I had better buy the cat a big piece of fish because he saved my life,’ Andrew later said. ‘I’m just so thankful to that little fella.’

  HOW ALARMING!

  In the animal kingdom, many creatures – especially those that are preyed upon – have ways of letting their fellow species’ members know when danger is approaching. The most common form is an alarm call, such as those used by birds, small rodents and monkeys. These calls may also be interpreted by animals of other species – for example, many small birds have similar alarm calls and will take cover on hearing each other’s. Visual alarm signals are most common in mammals, and are known as ‘flagging’ – for example, raising the tail to show a white patch of fur underneath as the animal flees from danger. Ants, bees and certain types of fish have a silent method of communicating about a perceived threat – they secrete ‘alarm pheromones’.

  • BELDING’S GROUND SQUIRRELS, native to the western United States, have two types of alarm calls: a churr or trill, a series of five notes given rapidly, to warn of terrestrial predators that pose a less immediate threat, and a high-pitched whistle to signal the presence of an immediate threat, such as an aerial predator.

  • THE EASTERN, or purple, swamphen, sub-species of which can be found around the world, gives conspicuous tail flicks to signify danger.

  • VERVET MONKEYS, commonly found in Africa, have different calls to signify snakes, leopards and eagles, with each call eliciting an appropriate response from fellow vervets.

  • WHEN INJURED, minnows and catfish release pheromones which cause fish nearby to hide in tight schools near the sea bottom.

  The sounds animals make:

  • Apes: gibber

  • Beetles: drone

  • Bitterns: boom

  • Deer: bell

  • Falcons: chant

  • Grasshoppers: chirp or pitter

  • Grouse: drum

  • Hippos: bray

  • Hyenas: laugh

  • Tortoises: grunt

  Did you know…

  … that male swallows emit false alarm calls during the mating season when females leave their nests, in order to prevent them mating with other male swallows nearby?

  CREATURES THAT CARE

  Animals are also capable of a quieter form of heroism – by providing companionship, friendship or maternal care, they can make a real difference to the lives of others, whether humans or other animals. They can provide tremendous support to people battling disease or depression, and can help people who struggle socially to communicate better by improving their confidence or making learning fun. The maternal instincts of female animals have led to some touching stories of creatures that are normally considered prey nurturing the offspring of predators, and of wild animals caring for abandoned and vulnerable human babies. This chapter also brings together some tales of truly unlikely friendships between animals of different species.

  PIP

  A feline friend helped a girl with cancer through the most difficult period of her life and gave her the confidence to hold her head up high…

  At the age of 18, Jessica Ford from Salisbury, Wiltshire, was diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukaemia. Aside from the gruelling, painful treatments she had to undergo in order to battle the illness, she lost her hair and a lot of weight, and was concerned about how people would react to her changed appearance when she left hospital. She also hated being separated from her pet cat, Pip, and worried that her beloved friend wouldn’t recognise her when she came home.

  Jessica had been given black-and-white Pip on her sixth birthday as a surprise gift. The two had become firm friends right away and Jessica loved caring for the energetic little kitten from the outset. When she was eventually allowed home for a day visit her worries were proved unfounded: Pip recognised Jessica instantly, running down the garden path to greet her. It was an emotional reunion, and seeing that her cat still recognised her made Jessica realise that even though she didn’t look anything like her usual self, she was still the same person inside. ‘This realisation helped me a lot when dealing with what was happening in my life,’ said Jessica. ‘She had such a calming effect on me.’ It was just the confidence boost she needed, and she returned to hospital to complete the remaining weeks of her treatment feeling reassured.

  When she returned home a few weeks later as an outpatient, she needed Pip’s friendship more than ever. Although her loving family were there to offer support, Jessica’s friends were busy doing their A-levels, and she missed them. ‘Pip was an amazing companion, having the ability to make me laugh on good and bad days. That was so important at the time,’ Jessica explained. On some days Jessica would be in too much pain for Pip to sit on her lap, but it was as if the cat had a sixth sense – when Jessica felt really awful Pip wouldn’t even attempt to get onto her lap, she would just sit nearby. Jessica’s constant companion even waited patiently outside the bathroom while she showered, and would welcome her home with vigorous purring whenever she came back from hospital appointments.

  In 2008, Jess nominated Pip for a Rescue Cat Award, organised by the charity Cats Protection, and Pip was selected as a finalist in the Best Friends category. She had certainly been a true best friend to Jessica: ‘She truly gave me so much courage and the desire to fight on,’ she said.

  BARNEY

  Parrots are known for their ability to copy human speech, but the roles were reversed when a little boy from Blackburn learned to speak by listening to a macaw…

  Dylan Hargreaves, aged four, had severe learning difficulties and had never uttered a single word. His mother Michelle, 33, said he would try to speak but no sound would come out. But that was all to change when she was given three-year-old Barney the parrot as a gift by her partner Rob Hargreaves.

  Dylan seemed to be fascinated by the bird, and loved to sit near Barney watching him and listening to the sounds he made. A few months after Barney arrived in their home, Michelle was delighted to hear little Dylan begin to say his first words. It would only be the odd word, but it came out clearly enough for Michelle to understand what her son was saying.

  ‘Every time I gave the bird something to say, Dylan started trying to say the same thing,’ she explained. ‘I think it’s because the bird says things slower than me, which helps Dylan understand.’ Thanks to Barney’s help, Dylan was soon coming out with words like ‘night, night’, ‘Dad’, ‘Mum’, ‘ta’, ‘hello’ and ‘bye’, and speec
h experts believed that soon he would be able to move on to two-syllable words. Michelle was convinced that if he did, his first one would be ‘Barney’, because he loved his feathered friend so much.

  Dr Hazel Roddham, a speech therapist from the University of Lancashire agreed that a child with learning difficulties could benefit from a parrot’s slow repetition of words, adding: ‘If there’s some enjoyment, a child is more likely to learn.’

  ALBERT

  A lonely orphaned elephant got the swing back into his stride thanks to a woolly new friend…

  When a six-month-old elephant was orphaned after his mother died in a fall down a cliff, vets at South Africa’s Sanbona Wildlife Reserve hoped the baby would be adopted by another elephant cow and stay with the herd. After monitoring the situation for a while they realised this wasn’t going to happen – without milk to feed on he would starve – and so they took him to the Shamwari Wildlife Rehabilitation Centre, in the Eastern Cape.

  In his new surroundings, Themba, as staff named the new arrival, made an unusual friend – although the first meeting didn’t quite go smoothly. Filmmaker and naturalist Lyndal Davies described how all hell broke loose when a sheep named Albert was placed in the baby elephant’s enclosure. ‘Themba made a dash for the sheep and chased him around his watering hole,’ he said. The sheep hid in a shelter at the far end of the enclosure for 12 hours. Eventually curious, Themba began to approach the shelter and poke his trunk in-between the poles, sniffing at Albert and gently touching his woolly back.

  The next day there were developments. Albert seemed to have grown bored with his hideaway and ventured out. Themba was soon at the sheep’s side and the two explored the enclosure together – and they made quite a picture, Themba walking along with his trunk resting on Albert’s back. From then on, the pair were inseparable.

  The centre’s wildlife director, Dr Johan Joubert, was pleased with the pairing because the sheep was strong enough to make a good playmate for Themba and could handle the elephant’s boisterous play much better than the human staff members. Albert had helped the elephant to gain confidence and to learn affection, too, by becoming a member of his herd.

  Any concerns that Themba would end up thinking he was a sheep were overturned when staff noticed Albert had started to copy everything the elephant did – even tucking into thorny acacia bushes with his pachyderm friend. Themba would eventually be released back into the wild when he was ready and, although the pair would be separated, their friendship would have a lasting positive effect on Themba’s development.

  MZEE

  A lonely baby hippo brought an old tortoise out of its shell when circumstances brought the unlikely pair together after the 2004 tsunami hit Kenya…

  In December 2004, a frightened, dehydrated one-year-old hippo calf was found near the coast of Kenya by wildlife rangers. It had been separated from its family and swept out to sea when the Boxing Day tsunami flooded the area. Various people tried to rescue the poor creature, including fishermen using their nets. Eventually the rangers took the hippo, christened Owen, in the back of a pick-up truck, to Haller Park in Mombasa. He would have to remain in captivity, since any male hippos that came across him would have killed him instantly.

  At the wildlife sanctuary, the abandoned hippo was placed in an enclosure with a 130-year-old Aldabra tortoise named Mzee, which is Swahili for ‘old man’. Staff at the sanctuary were surprised when the pair struck up a friendship and became inseparable: they ate together, slept next to each other and spent all day in each other’s company, with Owen the hippo following Mzee the tortoise around and licking his face. Mzee would even let Owen put his mouth around his head, showing great trust between the two.

  This bizarre pairing became the subject of much media attention, and Owen and Mzee were soon world famous, with director of Haller Park Dr Paula Kahumbu and father and daughter team Craig and Isabella Hatkoff writing a series of books about the animals. Later on, Owen was introduced to an older female hippo named Cleo in a separate enclosure, where he seemed to settle in well with one of his own kind. But the story of resilient Owen and caring Mzee would continue to entertain children for years to come.

  CARING CHIMPANZEES

  In Nigeria, a disabled boy who was abandoned in the forest found an unusual new adoptive family…

  Hunters in the Falgore forest in Nigeria were astonished to find a two-year-old boy living with a family of chimpanzees. They brought him in to the Tudun Maliki Torrey home in the city of Kano, where nursing staff named him Bello.

  They believed he had been living with the chimpanzees for eighteen months, having most likely been abandoned. He was both mentally and physically disabled, and had a misshapen forehead, sloping right shoulder and protruding chest. He was thought to be the child of the nomadic Fulani people, who travel great distances across the West African Sahel region and are known to abandon their disabled children.

  Most such children would die, but Bello was lucky enough to be found – probably when around six months old, based on the traits he exhibited – by the family of chimps and cared for by a nursing female. The chimpanzees had taught him their ways and behaviour. When he was brought into the centre he dragged his arms along the ground as a chimp would, said Abba Isa Muhammad, the home’s child welfare officer, and ‘would jump and grunt or squeak like a chimpanzee… He would leap about at night from bed to bed in the dormitory where we put him with the other children… He would smash and throw things.’ Even several years later he would clap his hands over his head repeatedly with cupped hands, and make chimpanzee-like noises rather than speaking.

  In spite of his unusual behaviour, the staff were fond of him. It was a miracle that the boy had survived, and he certainly wouldn’t have done without the care of the chimpanzees.

  Alternative childcare

  There have been other interesting instances of animals caring for human children:

  In Tehran, Iran, in 2001, a 16-month-old toddler went missing from his nomadic parents’ tent while they were working in the fields. He was found safe and sound by a search party three days later in a mother bear’s den. The female appeared to have cared for the infant during this time. A medical examination showed the toddler was in good health.

  When a monkey began taking an interest in their 21-day-old baby, Rohit Khuntia and Kamalini Khuntia, quite naturally, reacted by shooing the creature away – monkeys were usually seen as a menace in the Dhenkanal area of Orissa, India, where they lived. But the little simian continued to visit their house every day to play with their son. Eventually the parents put their fear to one side and allowed the monkey into the family. Before long it was arriving at the house in the morning and taking care of the baby all day. Mother Kamalini described how the monkey would care for her child while she was busy with household chores, looking after him gently, as a mother would, and never causing him the slightest harm.

  ANJANA

  A female chimpanzee at an animal sanctuary in South Carolina became a surrogate mother to dozens of baby animals…

  In 2008, heart-warming images of a chimpanzee mothering two adorable white tiger cubs were published. Mitra and Shiva were born during Hurricane Hannah at The Institute of Greatly Endangered & Rare Species (TIGERS) in South Carolina. Their mother became stressed when their sanctuary flooded and they had to be separated from her for their own safety. Instead, the 21-day-old cubs were adopted and cared for by chimpanzee Anjana under keeper China York’s supervision.

  The story of Anjana and the cubs gained widespread attention, but it wasn’t the first time the chimp had cared for another animal’s babies. In China’s role as infant animal care giver, she nurtures hundreds of animals when they are born. China looked after Anjana when she was born and the pair had lived side by side ever since. Anjana began to copy her and join in with caring for and raising baby animals. China explained Anjana’s responsibilities: ‘She gives them a bottle, lies with them and acts as a surrogate mother. She has a close contact and bond, and give
s them a nurturing.’

  Anjana had raised leopards, lions and orang-utans before she took on the tigers, and Dr Bhagavan, the founder of the institute, praised her for being a wonderful assistant carer.

  CROSS-SPECIES CARE

  When an animal provides maternal care to another animal that is not its own offspring it is termed allomaternal care – this is commonly seen in species of primates, such as silvered langurs, which will take it in turns to care for another female’s child within their group. As seen in the case of Anjana, this maternal behaviour can also cross species boundaries. Here are some more touching stories of alloparents in action...

  • A 12-WEEK-OLD MACAQUE that had been abandoned by its mother and was close to death was rescued on Neilingding Island, in Goangdong, China, and taken to an animal hospital. Although his health began to improve, he seemed spiritless, until he made friends with a white pigeon. The two became inseparable and the little monkey got a new lease of life thanks to the affection of his feathered friend.

  • A PIG adopted three tiger cubs whose own mother couldn’t feed them and raised them along with her piglets at the Chimelong Safari Park in Guangzhou’s Panyu District, China, in 2007.

  • IN 2005 lurcher Geoffrey befriended a baby deer named Mi-Lu at the Knowsley Animal Park in Merseyside after she was rejected by her mother.

  • AT THE SAFARI ZOOLOGICAL PARK in southeast Kansas, owner Tom Harvey introduced a golden retriever that had just weaned her own pups to a litter of tiger cubs that had been rejected by their own mother. Puppies and tiger cubs take around the same time to develop, and the dog immediately began to lick, clean and feed the cubs.