hey

this man Gilberto (Chito) Shedden nursed this crocodile back to health after it was shot in the eye, and they were best friends for the rest of the crocodile’s life.

this python came in out of the wild as a baby snake and curled up next to the family’s infant, Oun Sam­bat (or Oeun Sambat?) and they were inseparable for 12 years

Cristina Zenato removes hooks from sharks and they let her stick her hand down their throat to do it and they even bring other sharks who need help to see her.

It’s a relationship that goes beyond a single helpful interaction. For example one of the sharks that would show up when she first started swimming with them was a shark she called Foggy Eye who really didn’t like to be touched. One day, Foggy Eye showed up with a hook in her mouth that Cristina Zenato removed, and ever after, Foggy Eye cuddles when she visits, putting her head in Cristina’s lap and enjoying some petting

 We don’t know SO much. Some wolf spiders will adopt unrelated orphaned spiderlings and raise them. We recently discovered that the ant-mimicking jumping spider (below) produces “milk” and suckles its young until they are nearly fully grown.

That’s the story.

They live alone. They die alone.

Except for Octopus City where they live in a social collective.

Except that I watched with my own fucking eyes a giant Northwest Pacific Octopus who my friend social for an aquariums interact. He hadn’t seen her in a year. He reacted to meeting us and to getting treats? But all he wanted to do was see her, touch her, show her his enrichment items. After a year he recognized her and the response was “YOUR BACK AUNTIE YOURE BACK I MISSED YOU LOOK WHAT I WAS DOING WHAT DO YOU THINK BUT YOURE BACK hi nice to meet your friends YOURE BACK.”