If you've been following my posts (which I hope you have) then you'll have read my post the other week with photos of a long-haired Macaque monkey in the Monkey Park of Udad, Bali caring for a little stray kitten. (The title is Guardian Monkeys if you want to check it out) Continuing on with the theme of compassionate animals, I came across this touching set of photographs today. I'm not the biggest bird lover in the world (in fact I have a bit of a phobia of them... it's something about their beaks) but these photos really are moving. It's not just humans and monkeys that have feelings... birds do too.

According to the source, these photos reduced many people to tears. The photographer sold the photos to a famous French newspaper for a "nominal fee" and all copies of the newspaper were sold out on that day.

The photos show a swallow after being hit by a car and his or her fellow swallow coming to the rescue. (the captions in the original post suggest that the female swallow was hit by a car and the male swallow tries to come to the rescue but I don't know if that's real or fictional)


As the swallow swooped down low, she was hit by a car in a fatal accident.



The other swallow comes along with food and tries to care for her.



He returns again to find her dead



He tries to move her...



He then starts to cry (for help?)



The stands there looking all silent and forlorn. You can actually see the sadness in his face!




(source: www.binscorner.com/pages/w/who-says-birds-dont-have-feelings.html)

It seems that dogs are also capable of altruism towards one another... check out this video of one dog saving another dog in the middle of the highway in Chile.






link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VYZQbZ1jK58&

These photos have also suddenly reminded me of a film I once saw a few years ago too called The Story of the Weeping Camel. Yes, animal are capable of crying too. Has anyone ever seen it? It's a "docudrama" that follows the adventures of a family of herders in Mongolia's Gobi region who rear camels. One of their mother camel unexpectedly rejects her newborn calf, a rare white camel, and refuses to give it milk after going through two days of labor. The family try various rituals to restore the mother / calf relationship including calling upon the services of an indigenous violin player. At one point you witness the mother camel crying real tears (you actually see the tears rolling down her face). Here's the trailer below. I think you can watch the whole thing on YouTube. Watch it and weep...






link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aDpneKa9YxA