35 Wholesome Animal Facts That Will Warm Your Heart

During the Australian wildfires, wombats started extending their burrows to other animals in need even including birds and reptiles and had different “rooms” set up for each species to stay safe and even started digging their “entryways” bigger for bigger animals like sheep 🐑 🥹

There are reports of elephants finding humans sleeping under trees and the elephants think they’re dead. People have woken up with elephants gently stroking them with their trunk and in some cases they try to cover them with branches and sticks as a “burial”

Elephants are one of the few animals who mourn their dead and have rituals.

I saw a video not too long ago of some research ravens given small toys to play with. When the researchers came to collect the toys the ravens hid the toys and tried to trick the researchers into looking in fake hiding spots so they wouldn’t find and take the toys away.

Orcas have incredibly complex social structures. They have different languages and regional dialects. They have names. They sing and dance. Pods that are close and speak the same language will mourn deaths and celebrate births together, even from other pods, other families. Their young are largely taught by the matriarch(s) of the pod, and they’re able to teach verbally, rather than by showing.

This means they have *culture*. Traditions, not just instinct or patterns. One of the only animals in the world that has that.Orcas have incredibly complex social structures. They have different languages and regional dialects. They have names. They sing and dance. Pods that are close and speak the same language will mourn deaths and celebrate births together, even from other pods, other families. Their young are largely taught by the matriarch(s) of the pod, and they’re able to teach verbally, rather than by showing.

This means they have *culture*. Traditions, not just instinct or patterns. One of the only animals in the world that has that.

In a recent study, researchers put one rat in an uncomfortably small, confined space that can be opened by another rat on the outside. The Outside Rat would figure out how to release the Trapped Rat when they made sounds of distress. Even when the researchers distracted the Outside Rat with treats, it would save a treat for the Trapped Rat when it let it out. Basically proving that rats have empathy.

Which I already knew, I love rats. They make amazing pets, clean & smart. It’s just a damn shame that they only live about 3-4 years on average. Plenty of time to break your heart, but definitely not long enough.

Mama cats can sense when their kitten(s) are having nightmares, so they tightly pull them into a hug and lick their faces to aid them

In Switzerland, it is illegal to own only one Guinea Pig as they get lonely

My father in law worked for a commercial plumbing company. They got a job putting in all the water related stuff for the primate enclosures at the local zoo. While working near orangutans, they had to not leave their tools unattended, and take inventory when they left. The orangutans would try to use the tools to take their enclosure apart.

Bonus Wholesome: Years later, my son got a book on animals at the book fair. Reading it together, when we got to the part about orangutans it said, “orangutans are so smart, plumbers working on their enclosures at the (Hometown) Zoo had to be careful not to get their tools taken when working on their enclosure.”

I said, “Holy c**p, they are talking about your grandpa!!”

Bearded dragons wave to communicate greeting and that they aren’t a threat. When you wave to a bearded dragon and it waves back at you, you’re literally speaking the same language with the same intent.

Zebras can’t sleep alone which leads to my theory Marty spent like 80% of the Madagascar movies as a raging insomniac hence explaining his erratic personality at times

deer adopt baby deer. like if a mom deer gets hit on the road, and another mom deer is around, which is likely because they are herd animals. they just like “i guess i got two now🤷‍♀️”. i think a lot of animals are all “not my kid, not my problem” but not deer.

Dogs evolved the ability to move their eyebrows to better communicate with humans.

Cows have best friends

Cats will knead throughout life because of when they were kittens with their mother. If a Cat kneads on you, I know it may hurt, but they see you as their parent/family and they have a somewhat deep connection with you.

Otters hold each other’s hands when they are sleeping so they don’t float away.

Wild wolf packs and murders of crows form bonds over time. The crows help lead the wolves to live prey and in return and crows get the scraps after the wolf pack has eaten their fill. Crows have been seen playing with wolf pups and bringing them sticks and feathers as gifts. These same crows and wolf pups reunite as adults and do the deal time and time again. Sometimes the birds and carnivores just hang out together, supposedly just to enjoy each other’s time.

Like Hood Nature (Casual Geographic) once said, “There’s a Disney movie in here, I just know it.”

if a cat blinks slowly at you it’s giving you a hug and if you blink slowly back you can give it a hug in its language

Vampire bats will share food with other vampire bats who haven’t fed in the last day or two (their metabolism means they die if they don’t eat roughly every three days). This helps support members of the colony, even though it puts the sharer at risk. It is considered one of the few forms of altruism observed in non-human animals.

Dogs love us just as much as we love them.

Scientists studied their brainwaves and they showed a significant difference between being shown the image of a stranger and the image of their owner. Furthermore, the “pleasure center” of their brain shows more activity with humans than it does with other dogs

Sometimes dogs in movies have had to have their tails replaced with CGI because their real ones were wagging too much.

Cats sleep on your shoes because they are comforted by your scent. They may also sleep on your sheets or laundry.

There’s an aquarium in Japan that has eels who are antisocial, but because of the constant exposure to people, they’ve learned to be comfortable with humans. But due to the pandemic, eels went back to being isolated creatures, until the aquarium decided to FaceTime the eels. Yes, FaceTiming eels.

They eventually went back to be comfortable to humans.

Cats don’t meow to other cats. They meow to people to get their attention

When they hear running water, beavers will automatically start to build a dam. We know this because people put a speaker playing sounds of running water next to beavers, and the first thing they did was start building a dam on the speaker.

Humans aren’t the only species to be found to keep other animals as pets/livestock in a way that resembles us much more than you might think. Some spiders have pet frogs. Some types of ants will raise aphids like livestock. In captivity the list expands–Like how many cheetahs in captivity have emotional support service dogs to help them with anxiety and other issues, especially in breeding programs where a happy cheetah is MUCH more likely to be able to carry to term. Even species that don’t exhibit the behavior yet show that they could if presented with the right option of pet–See elephants getting excited about cute things, and being very gentle with anything they know is smaller/weaker than them.

Pigeons are not wild animals, they are feral. Every pigeon in your city is descended from escaped domesticated birds. You could catch and tame a pigeon just like any stray dog or cat.

Despite all the weirdness that is the Platypus, they are still discovering weird things about it.

Within the past two years it was discovered that platypus fur glows [blue-green](https://www.sciencenews.org/article/platypus-glow-blue-green-ultraviolet-light-fluorescent-fur) when exposed to ultraviolet light.

English mastiffs sailed on the Mayflower:

Most people wouldn’t consider dogs that can weigh nearly 200 pounds an “essential,” but most people weren’t John Goodman.

The 25-year-old pilgrim brought his English mastiffs on the Mayflower with him, and they sailed to the New World. Though the master didn’t last long, the community adopted his dogs, and cared for them.

Elephants can detect water underground. They will use their tusks, feet and trunks to dig it out. Other animals are aware and will sit near by waiting for their turn at the water spot

Some bees take naps in flowers.

Edit: [wholesome video of them](https://youtu.be/zTpf1Emh7zE)

River otters have a [favorite rock that they keep in their little pocket.](https://aquarium.org/a-sea-otters-toolkit/)
I love watching otters! 🙂

Geese mate for life

Rats will help free other rats from uncomfortable position, even if it means sharing food or getting no reward at all.

Rats have more empathy than humans

Squirrels will “adopt” orphaned baby squirrels and take care of them ❤️

Moma bears sometimes takes orphan baby cubs and nurse them as if it was her own.