The Ukrainian armed forces public relations department – Defense of Ukraine on Twitter – should be using this. Maybe they are. This sort of video is normally published on the Defense of Ukraine Twitter feed but not this time as far as I can tell. It shows a fawn suckling on the ear lobe of a Ukrainian soldier.
It is sad because the fawn must have lost their mother and is treating the soldier as a surrogate mother; looking for milk. The question is how are they going to feed the fawn? Not an ideal situation to nurse an orphaned wild animal.
And it would ironic if the fawn’s mother had been killed in the fighting which is very possible based on what I see. The fighting can be fierce and very destructive of nature. Many wild animals must have been killed as ‘innocent bystander victims’.
Click the play button to see the video
Terribly sad. Hundreds of thousands of animals including wild animals living in the wild, captive wild animals at zoos and domestic cats and dogs have been killed. We need to remember them as well as the humans. The humans know what they are doing. The know the risks but animals are entirely innocent; caught in the crossfire or simply bombed out of their apartments by the Russians with their caregivers.
We see a lot of early weaned domestic cats doing the same thing. They may substitute their caregivers ear lobe for their mother’s nipple of some other part of the person’s anatomy such as their hand. Or they might suckle on fabric such as a wool sweater. That’s sad to see too. They may get over it or they may not.
