Ducklings raised by a cat

Cats and baby ducks are pretty cute on their own but this video of a cat trying to nurse ducklings might just exceed the Internet’s viral cuteness metric. According to Raidió Teilifís Éireann (RTÉ), Ireland’s public radio company, this unlikely relationship was discovered after Ronan and Emma Lally, of Clara, Co. Offaly, noticed that three of their newly hatched ducklings had gone missing. Ronan Lally blamed a neighborhood cat, dubbed “The White Cat,” according to RTÉ, but the farmers’ outrage turned to astonishment when they discovered the cat had stolen the ducks to nurse, not to eat.

Amazing cat nursing ducklings!

The cat, having given birth to a litter of kittens just before the ducklings hatched, had incorporated them into her own brood. Even more incredible – she was nursing them. In remarkable video posted on YouTube, the ducks can be seen crowding around the clearly protective mother, apparently trying to copy the feeding kittens. However, Meredith Turner, a media relations specialist at farm animal rescue organization Farm Sanctuary, told that while the video is adorable, “ducks absolutely cannot suckle.” Interspecies parenting is not an entirely new concept, of course. Examples of these decidedly nontraditional caregiving relationships include everything from a tiger raising piglets to a chimp bottle-feeding a bay hyena.

After a while, Ronan wanted to separate the unlikely family, fearful that the cat’s predatory instincts would kick in. But Emma, who works as a midwife, persuaded him that they had to remain together. As the ducklings grew into ducks, they quickly outgrew both their kitten siblings and their cat mother. But they all remained good friends and were the subject of a BBC nature series on odd animal couples.