Goats Adopt Baby Monkey Who Lost His Family

They carry him everywhere.

In a remarkable display of interspecies friendship, an orphaned monkey has been found to be living amongst a group of goats who've evidently accepted the lonely baby as one of their own.

YouTube/CCTV News

Zhong Shu, a farmer in eastern China, made the heartwarming discovery while tending to the herd. He told CCTV News that, for the past five days or so, the monkey and his unlikely new family have been inseparable:

"It seems the goats made [him] feel safe. Every time I came to shut goats in the fold at night, I found the monkey was either on the back of this goat or that goat. I tried to feed bananas to the monkey, but it did not eat and held on to the goat tightly."

Footage shows the fair-haired monkey clinging to the goats as they roam and graze, much as he would to his real mom in the wild.

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While it's unclear what circumstances may have led the baby monkey to seek comfort with a species other than his own, what matters most is that he found it so freely offered, and for long enough for expert help to arrive.

Authorities are reportedly planning to rescue the monkey, after which he'll be transferred to a local zoo to be cared for until he's fit to be released back into the wild.