Unlikely Friendships : 47 Remarkable Stories From the Animal Kingdom (28 page)

ON AUSTRALIA'S GREAT BARRIER REEF, IF YOU DIVE
down with the sun's rays as they slice into the sea, a festival of life explodes into view.

At least 2,000 species of fish, plus invertebrates and other critters, wriggle and flit along the walls of the reef, which is a series of coral mountains that rise and fall for some 1,400 miles—the largest living natural structure on Earth. There, on one particularly lively stretch of rock, I witnessed a marine partnership unlike anything I'd seen before.

The ocean is a good place to find “symbiotic” relationships—associations of different species that may offer benefits like access to food, protection, or just a ride from here to there. Think of clownfish that gain security from predators by living within toxic anemones, or the remora fish that clings to a shark's belly to feed on the parasites living there.

But this was not a case of symbiosis I'd heard about before, nor one that had an obvious explanation. It was truly a bizarre assemblage of “friends.” Our dive group—on assignment for
National Geographic
magazine, and including photographers David Doubilet and Jennifer Hayes—had been exploring this site for days, and we'd all seen the puffer fish before. He (I'm guessing the animal's sex) was an old specimen, a tattered softball of a fish. He was always alone, lolling about on the sea floor or moving slowly through the shallows. Oddly tame, he let me approach to within inches and swim alongside him. The manic vibrations of his tiny fins propelled the bulbous fish forward, one eye twitching quick looks my way.

One afternoon as I came off the edge of the reef, I saw my friend the puffer—but this time he wasn't alone. He had found his way to the very middle of a shoal of fish utterly unlike himself. They were sweetlips, a colorful, wide-mouthed type of grunt that schools in large numbers in sunny, shallow waters. The aged puffer, a scruffy blight on their collective loveliness,
was hanging out among them as if he belonged, and the sweetlips seemed oblivious to the invader. The fish hung in the water as if attached to the strings of a mobile, rising and falling in sync at the whim of the currents. The puffer looked absurd yet strangely regal in his place at center, a halo of yellow beauties surrounding his bloated, kingly form.

It wasn't a fluke. The odd cluster was there again later, and the next day as well. The interspecies group was the welcoming party as we arrived on the reef and the well-wishers as we departed. It was a delightful scene.

What interest this giant puffer fish had in the sweetlips, I can only guess. My best “biologically correct” explanation: Both species love a good cleaning, and cleaner wrasses—small fish that pick old skin and parasites off larger fish—are commonly found where sweetlips gather; they're invited to enter the fishes' wide-open mouths to nibble at the leftovers there. Perhaps the puffer realized that to get access to the best cleaning station, he would have to join the crowd. And once he'd found his way to center stage and was accepted there, he simply stuck around.

But there's a more fun explanation, one that would no doubt make any scientist balk. Let's say that by surrounding himself with all that color and beauty, the old puffer gave his sour mood a boost, buoying his lonesome self to that happy place where the best friendships are made.

PUBLICATIONS AND FILMS

“Assignment America,”
CBS Evening News,
January 2, 2009.

Badham, M. and N. Evans.
Molly's Zoo.
Simon & Schuster, 2000.

Bekoff, M.
The Emotional Lives of Animals.
New World Library, 2007.

Bolhuis, J. J. “Selfless memes.”
Science
20, Nov. 2009, p. 1063.

California Fire Data:
http://bof.fire.ca.gov/incidents/incidents_stats

De Waal, F.
Good Natured.
Harvard University Press, 1996.

Douglas-Hamilton, D., producer. Heart of a Lioness.
Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom,
2005.

Feuerstein, N. and J. Terkel. “Interrelationships of dogs (
Canis familiaris
) and cats (
Felis catus L.
) living under the same roof.”
Applied Animal Behavior Science
10 (2007).

Goodall, J. Interview with Doug Chadwick for
National Geographic,
2009, and personal communication, June 2010.

Hatkoff, I., C. Hatkoff, and P. Kahumbu.
Owen & Mzee: The Language of Friend- ship.
Scholastic Press, 2007, and personal communication.

Kendrick, K., A. P. da Costa, A. E. Leigh, et al. November 2001. “Sheep Don't Forget a Face.”
Nature,
414:165.

Kerby, J.
The Pink Puppy: A True Story of a Mother's Love.
Wasteland Press, 2008, and personal communication.

King, B.
Being with Animals.
Doubleday, 2010, and personal communication.

Laron, K. and M. Nethery,
Two Bobbies: A True Story of Hurricane Katrina, Friendship, and Survival.
Walker & Co., 2008.

Linden, E.
The Parrot's Lament.
Plume, 1999.

Maxwell, L. “Weasel Your Way into My Heart.” The Humane Society of the United States (website), 2010, and personal communication.

Morell, V. and J. Holland. “Animal Minds.”
National Geographic,
213:3, 2008. Nicklen, P.
Polar Obsession
(National Geographic Society, 2009) and personal communication.

Patterson, F.
Koko's Kitten.
The Gorilla Foundation, 1985.

There's a Rhino in My House
(film). Animal Planet, 2009.

Vessels, J. “Koko's Kitten.”
National Geographic,
167:1, 1985.

SELECT WEB SOURCES

Animal Liberation Front (
animalliberationfront.com
)

Best Friends Animal Society (
bestfriends.org
)

Cute Overload (
cuteoverload.com
)

Interspecies Friends (
interspeciesfriends.blogspot.com
)

Mail Online (
dailymail.co.uk
)

Rat Behavior and Biology (
ratbehavior.org
)

SELECT ADDITIONAL READING ON ANIMAL EMOTIONS AND BEHAVIOR

Balcombe, J.
Second Nature.
Palgrave Macmillan, 2010.

Bekoff, M.
Wild Justice: The Moral Lives of Animals.
University of Chicago Press, 2010.

De Waal, F.
The Age of Empathy.
Harmony Books, 2009.

Goodall, J. and R. Wrangham.
In the Shadow of Man.
Harper Collins, 1971, and Mariner Books, 2010.

Hatkoff, A.
The Inner World of Farm Animals.
Stewart, Tabori & Chang, 2009.

Hauser, M. D.
Wild Minds.
Henry Holt and Co., 2000.

Masson, J. M. and S. McCarthy.
When Elephants Weep
. Delacorte Press, 1995.

Page, G.
Inside the Animal Mind.
Doubleday, 1999.

This project was very much a collaborative effort, as there would be no stories were it not for the storytellers. They were pet owners, zookeepers, animal rescuers, photographers, biologists, and other animal lovers who witnessed interspecies interactions, realized the moments were special, and were willing to share what they saw. My deepest thanks to the kind people, many of them quoted in these texts, who patiently provided information and images to make the collection possible.

I am also extremely grateful to the staff at Workman Publishing, especially Raquel Jaramillo for seeking me out to do this project and kindly praising the result, Beth Levy for shepherding the manuscript through copyediting and proofreading, and Melissa Lucier for her tireless efforts tracking down photographs all around the world.

Finally, I thank my family, friends, and colleagues who helped along the way. They include but are not limited to:

• Lynne Warren, for kindly editing the first messy draft

• Melanie Costello, for keeping me organized and confident

• Penny Bernstein, for endless ideas and support

• Mari Parker and Chen Yiqing, for translations

• Lorie Holland, for enthusiastic promotion and sales advice

• My husband, John, for tolerating the ups and downs and my obsessive reading aloud

• My niece and nephews for giving me the best reasons of all to tell these tales

• My much-adored mother, for passing on her love of animals to me.