15 Aug This Burn Victim Showed A Curious Orangutan Her Scars, And His Reaction Stunned The Internet

When I was fifteen, my school assigned its pupils work experience. Like most teenagers, I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do with my life and decided to go to a birds of prey sanctuary because I thought it would be interesting (spoiler alert: it was). The star attraction was a golden eagle named Orla. With a wing span of over 5-feet and potentially deadly talons, Orla was a fearsome beauty no one was allowed to go near, unless the sanctuary’s owner – who she regarded as her friend – was nearby.

I always kept my distance from Orla out of fear I’d get too close (“death by an eagle” certainly wasn’t in my life plan). But when animals are around members of the public every day, accidents inevitably happen. At a local fair, a toddler took a shining to Orla and decided to walk under the barrier closing off her pen to pet her. Amazingly, despite everything that was in Orla’s nature to do, she didn’t hurt the child. She had the intelligence to know that they were simply curious!

But what about animals in zoos? How do they really feel about visitors constantly approaching the glass and talking to them? Well, for this particular orangutan, he felt one special visitor deserved every second of his attention.

Animals are a lot more intelligent that what we give them credit for. This story’s proof that we share our planet with creatures who’re more empathetic than most humans. When burn victim Darci Miller decided to visit Indianapolis Zoo with her fiancé, Jason Costello, she’d no idea that she was about to have an unexpected emotional encounter from one of the orangutans.

As we all know, primates are our closest living relatives, and are incredibly similar to us humans. Don’t believe me? This incredible footage is undeniable proof… 

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