BigShinyThing

The wolf also shall dwell with the lamb, the leopard shall lie down with the young goat, the calf and the young lion and the fatling together, and a little child shall lead them. The cow and the bear shall graze; their young ones shall lie down together, and the lion shall eat straw like the ox. The nursing child shall play by the cobra’s hole, and the weaned child shall put his hand in the viper’s den. Isaiah 11 : 6-9

A Tokyo zoo reports that a snake is co-habiting with a hamster which was initially introduced to its tank as lunch. The bizarre pairing joins the now-famous odd couples of a year-old hippo and a 107-year old tortoise in Kenya and the tigress that adopted an onyx back in 2002.

“I have never seen anything like it,” a zookeeper at the Mutsugoro Okoku zoo said, adding that the hamster was known to fall asleep sitting atop the snake. The hamster was initially offered to Aochan, the two-year-old rat snake, because it was refusing to eat frozen mice, the Associated Press reports. As a joke, the zookeeper said they named the hamster Gohan - the Japanese word for meal.

Via the BBC and included because no BST week is complete without a comedy wildlife story.