Animal Instincts: Nature Verses Nurture

Sitting comfortably on a sofa in rural Australia, eighteen month old boarder collie cross Audrey and seven year old mot lop rabbit Luke are close and unlikely friends, overcoming the predator/prey instincts normal of encounters between the two species.

What is particularly interesting about their relationship is that they were introduced as adults when Audrey and her sister were already accustomed to venturing across nearby open fields for a spot of bunny hunting, an already favourite sport of theirs.

“I have to keep the farm gate shut,” property owner Annette said, “Otherwise Luke will follow the dogs when they go down to chase rabbits.”

She explained that Luke tends to sleep late most mornings and so she lets him out about lunchtime and he then spends the afternoons hopping around the garden and following Audrey everywhere.

There are other stories of friendships between unlikely species, many of them rather than predator and prey, indifferent in the natural world. The 27 September edition of the Daily Mail contained the article The abandoned monkey who had found love with a pigeon. The article also made mention of a pig who adopted a tiger cub who she fed along beside her own piglets.

It seems that in many such cases, one animal fills the emotional needs of the other: a dependent infant in need of care, a mother that’s lost her offspring, a solitary animal of a species heavily dependent on a sophisticated social structure. These needs rooted in survival are also instinctive, but for some reason surprising to us because they are evidence of emotion and perhaps even compassion, in no way subhuman, characteristics often referred to to distance Homo sapiens from the rest of the world.