I’ve wanted to post this video for a long time. However, I try to space out my articles about cute animal videos, or unlikely animal best friends, and this is one of both. It just might edge out the hand-holding otters for my favorite animal video on the internet.
A few months ago CBS Evening News highlighted the extraordinary events at The Elephant Sanctuary in Hohenwald, Tennessee. While the sanctuary is ostensibly for elephants and caters mostly to them, it does take in other needy animals, particularly stray dogs. Because there are 2,700 acres at the Sanctuary, there’s plenty of room for everyone.
The elephants tend to ignore the dogs and pair up amongst themselves, often ranging on the far ends of the sanctuary. The dogs stick closer to the main buildings and give the giant pachyderms a wide berth. Most of them, that is, except for Bella.
Bella has instead made best friends with Tarra, a nearly 9,000-pound Asian elephant. Bella isn’t even that big of a dog; she’s probably only around 60 or so pounds. That doesn’t stop her, however, from being inseparable from Tarra. And Tarra eschews the pattern of her fellow pachyderms and pairs up with only Bella, instead of one of the other elephants.
Unlike what I sometimes wonder about my dog and cat (who seem to rub off opposite traits on one another), Bella and Tarra aren’t under any misapprehension about their respective species. Bella will lie down and display her tummy to Tarra, who very, very carefully lifts a massive foot and scratches her canine friend’s belly with it. The extreme gentleness with which Tarra performs this favor reveals that the elephant knows just how much smaller and more breakable her friend is.
Tarra learned that lesson in the hardest of ways, when Bella had a spinal cord injury. The dog couldn’t move or even wag her tail, and for three weeks she had to live, motionless, in the sanctuary office.
For those three weeks, the inconsolable Tarra stood, nearly unmoving, outside the office. She pressed up against the fence as close as she could get. Thousands of acres on which to roam, and all Tarra wanted to do was wait to see Bella.
Eventually sanctuary co-founder Scott Blais carried Bella out onto the balcony so she and Tarra could see each other. Bella’s tail began to wag, so Blais brought her down beside the fence, where Tarra ran a joyful, loving trunk along her dear friend’s back.
The two buddies had already been attached at the hip for years, eating, playing, and sleeping together. After the incident the two grew even closer; it was following Bella’s recovery that she began allowing Bella to rub her stomach with a foot.
These two are perhaps the oddest and most definitely the sweetest couple I’ve ever featured. Watch the CBS News report about their friendship here.
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*(This image by AForestFrolic is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 License.)
