Animals are unique in their own way. Even though we underestimate their intelligence, trust me, they’re way better than us in every way.
Would you look after an accidentally-found baby as he/she is your own, without feeling any difference? Well, most probably, it’s impossible. Therefore, to prove that animals are better than human, a Florida woman has evidence.
Laurie Wolf found an owl and a duckling living together in her backyard. She, being a wildlife artist and an amateur photographer, she sent the photos of these bizarre relationship to the national geographic.
She confesses that this connection is astonishing and stills she cannot believe it.
The first time she noticed an Eastern Shriek own in a home box she has in her patio. After a month, she has noticed that owl had found a companion, which made her think it as a baby owl.
This selfless mother owl decided to raise the duckling as it’s her own. This duckling turned out to be a wood duck, a type that is known to live with shriek owls.
However, this connection feared Laurie as the duckling would be a prey of the owl , one day. So, she contacted the local bird expert to get it confirmed. According to him, she has a valid fear. Hence, she contacted a wild life sanctuary to request whether they could take the duckling and they agreed.
Laurie and her husband tried to capture the duckling as it jumped out of the box and headed to a pond. It was the last day they saw it.
According to Laurie, the intention of the owl is not clear, yet she says it might be a positive one, that the owl willingly adopted the duckling as its own.
The Manitoba director of Bird Sanctuary Canada, Christian Astuso explains this phenomena of wood duck birds as ‘brood paratism’ It’s a common fact that wood ducks are fond of laying eggs in different places. They often lay eggs in other birds’ nests hoping that the genes will enter the next generation.
He recalls an incident in 2007, where an owl incubated and hatched three wood ducklings. Furthermore, he says that, it’s hard to understand what the owl is thinking. But it might be the case what the scientists call as supernormal stimuli, which makes female owls nurture the egg without paying attention to where it came from.
Artuso further explains that, the duckling might have survived as they are precarious, means they are highly independent animals. He further says that there are many documented cases of chicks from one brood end up in another brood.
