When Emmelina Austin took her newborn son, Canyon, to Franklin Zoo Park in Boston, she had an unexpected play-date.
The new mom had her sleeping son cradled in her arms. And when the two stood in front of the gorilla enclosure, a mom of five, Kiki the gorilla, came over to admire the baby.
In the viral video, Kiki can be seen lovingly looking on at the tiny tot, and even trying to stroke him from the other side of the glass. As she continued to look on, Austin felt a bond develop with the gorilla.
“It was so sweet. For well over five minutes, she just sat there watching him and staring at him so lovingly,” she explained to NBC affiliate News Center Maine.
After these precious minutes, Kiki went off to find her youngest, 7-month-old Pablo, just as in any normal mom group.
“Her face was just so in love. She was showing her baby my baby. … You could see the emotion in her eyes,” Austin said of her new-found friend.
Apparently Kiki, who is 39, has shown her strong maternal instincts before. “We always joke that if a baby fell into our exhibit, Kiki wouldn’t give it back,” reported the CEO and president of Zoo New England, John Linehan to Today.
With her own babies, Kiki is very possessive. According to Linehan, Pablo’s father Kitombe hasn’t been given the opportunity to even hold Pablo yet. For the first two months he was constantly in Kiki’s arms, and it’s only now that she’s entrusting her daughters with her youngest infant for short periods of time.
As humans apparently share 97-98 % of their DNA with gorillas, it’s not so surprising that Kiki was so enthralled with Canyon. And those few minutes shared between the two moms and their infants summed up how precious motherhood is among all God’s creatures.
And today we celebrate...