Image by Getty

By Ari Feldman August 25, 2017

Niv, a four-year-old Indonesian black macaque, has made friends with a chicken that wandered into her cage at an Israeli zoo. The monkey has been caressing and holding the chicken for a week.

“It seems that Niv, who is four years old and has reached the age of sexual maturity, has difficulty finding a partner,” a spokesman for the Ramat Gan Safari Park near Tel Aviv, Mor Porat, told the Times of Israel.

“This probably explains the maternal instinct she expresses to this chicken,” he said.

Forwarding the News

Thoughtful, balanced reporting from the Forward and around the web, bringing you updated news and analysis each day.

Terms(Required)

I agree to the Forward's Terms of Service and Privacy Policy

Email(Required)

The chicken, for its part, shows no interest in leaving this inter-species relationship. It could get out of the pen just as easily as it got in, according to zoo officials.

The chicken “seems very happy to have found a surrogate mother. At night they sleep together,” Porat said. This chicken is apparently the second one that Niv the macaque has attempted to adopt.

Please enjoy the viral video of this improbable friendship as we wait for the inevitable tweets that accuse Niv of working for the Mossad and holding the chicken against its will.

Contact Ari Feldman at [email protected] or on Twitter @aefeldman.

The Forward is free to read, but it isn’t free to produce

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward.

Now more than ever, American Jews need independent news they can trust, with reporting driven by truth, not ideology. We serve you, not any ideological agenda.

At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.

Readers like you make it all possible. We’ve started our Passover Fundraising Drive, and we need 1,800 readers like you to step up to support the Forward by April 21. Members of the Forward board are even matching the first 1,000 gifts, up to $70,000.

This is a great time to support independent Jewish journalism, because every dollar goes twice as far.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

2X match on all Passover gifts!

$90 → $180 $180 → $360

$360 → $720

Other amount