Gohan and Aochan make strange
bedfellows:
one's a 3.5 inch dwarf hamster; the other is a four
foot rat snake.
Zookeepers at Tokyo's
Mutsugoro Okoku zoo
presented the hamster (whose
name means “meal” in
Japanese) to Aochan as a tasty morsel in October,
after the snake
refused to eat frozen mice.
But instead of indulging, Aochan decided to make
friends with the
furry rodent, according to keeper
Kazuya Yamamoto. The pair have shared
a cage since.
“I've never seen anything like it. Gohan
sometimes
even climbs onto Aochan to take a nap on his back,”
Yamamoto said.
Aochan, a 2 year old male
Japanese rat snake,
eventually developed an appetite for frozen rodents
but has so far shown no signs of gobbling up
Gohan,
despite her name.
“We named her Gohan as a joke,”
Yamamoto
chuckled. “But I don't think there's any danger
Aochan seems to enjoy Gohan's
company
very much.”
The Tokyo zoo also keeps a range of mostly
livestock
animals, and promotes “cross breed
interaction,” according to Yamamoto.
But Gohan
and Aochan's case
“was a complete accident,” Yamamoto said.
NEXT
