Don't play with your food, you might become buddies

[formercia]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/4627950.stm

Snake 'befriends' snack hamster

A rodent-eating snake and a hamster have developed an unusual bond at a zoo in the Japanese capital, Tokyo.

Their relationship began in October last year, when zookeepers presented the hamster to the snake as a meal.

The rat snake, however, refused to eat the rodent. The two now share a cage, and the hamster sometimes falls asleep sitting on top of his natural foe.

"I have never seen anything like it," a zookeeper at the Mutsugoro Okoku zoo told the Associated Press News agency.

The hamster was initially offered to Aochan, the two-year-old rat snake, because it was refusing to eat frozen mice, the Associated Press news agency reports.

As a joke, the zookeeper said they named the hamster Gohan - the Japanese word for meal.

"I don't think there's any danger. Aochan seems to enjoy Gohan's company very much," zookeeper Kazuya Yamamoto told the Associated Press news agency.

The apparent friendship between the snake and hamster is one of many reported bonds spanning the divide between predator and prey.

[CoffeeCat]

1. Snakes and hamsters living together! Mass hysteria!!! (nt)

[MindPilot]

2. After playing with my snake, we became friends

What?

[AValdoux]

3. Next thing you know...

...They will want to get married. See this is what all this "gay marriage talk" has gotten us. Confusion all the way up the food chain. I guess next someone from Europe will want to marry a sandwich.


AValdoux

[formercia]

4. I think the fundies will like these too....

Check out some of the other animal friend stories. Sort of like the Biblical prophesy......Hmmmmm....

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/4152447.stm

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/1905363.stm

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/4515951.stm

I wonder how long before it's the entree du jour.