CARLETON, OR (USA)
Sep 29, 2006
There's an old French proverb: Les chiens ne font pas des chats ("Dogs don't have cats").
Au contraire, mon fur-ère.
This week WNBC reported that "Bell" the Dachshund is the proud mother of 2 felines. Along with her recent litter of puppies, Bell nurses, cleans and protects the kitties as if they were her own.1
The 2 kittens had been found without a mother, and Bell's guardian decided to see if they might be accepted into the puppy brood. They bonded instantly. (However, some of them might be in for a surprise when they open their eyes next week.)
In 1859, Charles Darwin, the father of modern biology himself, was at a loss to explain this sort of occurence called "interspecies altruism". According to Darwin's theory of natural selection, different species should behave in a selfish and competitive manner. He admitted that interspecies altruism was "insuperable, and actually fatal to my whole theory." 2
But he got one thing right. He wrote, "I have myself seen a dog, who never passed a cat who lay sick in a basket ... without giving her a few licks with his tongue, the surest sign of kind feeling in a dog."3 
Sources:
1 "Mother Dog Adopts Litter of Kittens." WNBC. 25 Sep 2006.
2 Darwin, C. Origin of Species
(1859).
3 Darwin, C. Descent of Man
(1871).
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TWO OF THESE PUPPIES
