A grieving dog who lost her five puppies shortly after birth has adopted a monkey in the Colombian city of Cartagena.
According to Colombian police, the capuchin monkey was removed from his natural habitat when he was just an infant and given to the dog shortly after her puppies died.
The dog nursed the monkey and two quickly became inseparable and now the monkey will climb on his adoptive mother’s back and stay there all day. But local residents called the police because the monkey would become aggressive when people approached.
Who, how and why the monkey was taken from the wild is unclear, but Capuchin monkeys are highly trafficked and police estimate this monkey has a value of $1600 on the black market.
The police said, “We were surprised when we saw that there is a relationship between the dog and monkey. It is very unusual to see this situation.”
Environmental and ecological protection police have taken custody of the pair in an effort to separate them and return the monkey to the wild, but animal experts have expressed concern that the two should not be separated since the monkey does not know how to live in the wild and could be rejected by his own kind.
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