A baby hippo named Owen walks along with its 'mother,' a giant male Aldabran tortoise, at the Mombasa Haller Park in Kenya.
"After it was swept and lost its mother, the hippo was traumatized. It had to look for something to be a surrogate mother," ecologist Paula Kahumbu, who is in charge of Lafarge Park
"The hippo follows the tortoise exactly the way it follows 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," Kahumbu explained
They are now inseparable.
The female hippo has also lived without companionship from her species — for more than a decade.
The delicate process will begin with having the two animals meet and get used to each other's smell before moving them into a larger enclosure together with the tortoise.