Love Story of the century

The only reason that this story is being printed in my Blog which is obviously about Iran's Culture Politics and History is as follows: Whenever people want to show the cruelty of an "ACT" or the evil involved in committing a crime they usually say that "Those people are worse than animals", or "Even animals don't do what they did to their own kind", and... The fact of the matter is there is no evil in animals any act of killing committed by an animal against another is because of purely instinctual needs to survive. On the contrary the only animal that is capable of Evil is Human Beings. We do not have to go far to find examples of evil done by humans against other human beings. An example of this will be the death camps of Germany in which reportedly millions of innocent Jews were burnt in ovens or a more contemporary example is the treatment of political prisoners by the Islamic Republic of Iran. In 1988 under the direct hand written order of Ayatollah Khomeini over 33,000 political prisoners were executed within a matter of few month. There is also a hand written order from the Ayatollah Khomeini that specifically states that it is O.K. to draw the blood from prisoners before executing them. Guards on the scene reported that most of the prisoners after draining their body of blood were not able to breath and acted like a chicken that had it's head cut off shaking constantly and gasping for air.

NAIROBI (AFP) - A baby hippopotamus that survived the
tsunami waves on the Kenyan coast has formed a strong
bond with a giant male century-old tortoise in an animal
facility in the port city of Mombassa , officials said.

The hippopotamus, nicknamed Owenand weighing about
300 kilograms (650 pounds), was swept down Sabaki
River into the Ind ian Ocean , then forced back to shore
when tsunami waves struck the Kenyan coast on
December 26, before wildlife rangers rescued him.

"It is incredible. A-less-than- a-year-old hippo has adopted a
male tortoise, about a century old, and the tortoise seems to
be very happy with being a 'mother'," ecologist Paula Kahumbu,
who is in charge of Lafarge Park , told AFP.

"After it was swept away and lost its mother, the hippo was traumatized.
It had to look for something to be a surrogate mother.
Fortunately , it landed on the tortoise and established a strong bond.
They swim, eat and sleep together," the ecologist added.
"The hippo follows the tortoise exactly the way it followed its mother.
If somebody approaches the tortoise, the hippo becomes aggressive,
as if protecting its biological mother," Kahumbu added.

"The hippo is a young baby, he was left at a very tender age and
by nature, hippos are social animals that like to stay with their
mothers for four years," he explained.

"Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take,
but by the moments that take our breath away."

This is a real story that shows that our differences don't matter
much when we need the comfort of another.
We could all learn a lesson from these two creatures
"Look beyond the differences and find a way to walk the path together."

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Save the Earth... it's the only planet with chocolate.

Hello everyone.

This is an amazing story about an amazing relationship. Just look at these pictures and I hope you enjoy them as much as I did.

I was sent these pictures by a dear friend of mine, and it has stirred up so many different emotions in me that is hard to describe.

Despite it's simplicity it is immensely powerful and touches anyone who has ever gone through a disaster of a magnitude that may come close to a baby losing her mother; either through the powerful instinctual need of having a mother or the denial of actually losing her.

This in itself is extremely powerful, but when you look at the other side of the equation being a fully grown 100 years old male turtle having to recognize the need in this innocent one year old Hypo and understand that he has to play mother for her defies all rules and laws of evolution and our understanding that animals are not capable of feelings as us humans possess..

In a normal case there is no fully grown animal that is willing to leave the company of his own kind to play mother, of all roles, to a totally different species of animal. The only logical explanation behind this is this turtle has been able to feel the predicament that this one year old turtle was facing. Losing his mom and dad and all his own kind he must have felt that there is no way that the turtle will be able to survive if left alone.

Science has proven that the only way human beings are able to take care of other animals that are less evolved than themselves is to try to imagine themselves in their position. This accident has proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that when it comes to children animals not only have the same set of instinctual feelings of love as humans do but theirs surpasses our levels and shows us a glimpse that they may actually qualify as more sensitive and " Humane" as we are.

A simple example is the fact that human beings are the only living beings capable of committing evil acts. Animals do not have the capacity of committing evil acts against their own kind or other species . All the killings of animals by other animals is only done on an instinctual level. There is no way when a family of wolves or lions have killed another animal and are no longer hungry they would still engage on killing other animals. It is only done for survival. On the other hand humans are known to kill thousands of Buffaloes or other game animal just for the sake of saying they did that. The difference being that in case of the humans they even let the meat go to waste.
I am even not going to touch on the wars and destruction of millions of lives through murder and torture ... just for the sake of financial or Territorial gain.

The lesson I learned is that we have so much to learn from studying other forms of life. It is only through understanding our own place in the nature and realizing that as humans we are the designated guardians of all other life forms.
We cannot not allow any temporary need of our own destroy the habitat of a specie of plants or animals. It is only in understanding and respecting this process that we can rise to our responsibility and actually take steps to keep the balance.

Majid Biabani.