There are many examples of animals coming to surprisingliving arrangements. All are instances of that animal equivalentof anthropomorphism: zoomorphism, where an animal takes ahuman being, or another animal, to be one of its kind.
The most famous case is also the most common: the petdog, which has so assimilated humans into the realm ofdoghood as to want to mate with them, a fact that any dogowner who has had to pull an amorous dog from the leg of amortified visitor will confirm.
Our golden agouti and spotted paca got along very well,contentedly huddling together and sleeping against each otheruntil the first was stolen.
I have already mentioned our rhinoceros-and-goat herd, andthe case of circus lions.
There are confirmed stories of drowning sailors being pushedup to the surface of the water and held there by dolphins, acharacteristic way in which these marine mammals help eachother.
A case is mentioned in the literature of a stoat and a ratliving in a companion relationship, while other rats presented tothe stoat were devoured by it in the typical way of stoats.
We had our own case of the freak suspension of thepredator-prey relationship. We had a mouse that lived forseveral weeks with the vipers. While other mice dropped in theterrarium disappeared within two days, this little brownMethuselah built itself a nest, stored the grains we gave it invarious hideaways and scampered about in plain sight of thesnakes. We were amazed. We put up a sign to bring themouse to the public's attention. It finally met its end in acurious way: a young viper bit it. Was the viper unaware ofthe mouse's special status? Unsocialized to it, perhaps?
Whatever the case, th............