A Golden Retriever, A Hamster And 8 Birds Are Best Friends And Live In Harmony (23 Pics)

If nothing else (and there are many) we can thank the internet for making it a whole lot easier to discover interspecies BFFs among the domesticated animal kingdom. Be that an owl and a pussycat, an owl and a dog or, in this case, a dog, eight birds, and a hamster. The dog in question is called Bob and he's a golden retriever who lives in São Paulo, Brazil.

On returning to his Inverness-shire estate of Guisachan, he mated one with his Tweed water spaniel, Belle, who duly produced a litter of four yellow puppies named Cowslip, Crocus, Primrose and Ada. However, the 6th Earl of Ilchester's article Origin of the Yellow Retriever (Country Life, 1952) dismissed this tale. From studying Lord Tweedmouth's studbook and notes, Lord Ilchester deduced that the Baron had bought the puppies' sire, Nous, a yellow, wavy-coated retriever, from a cobbler in Brighton, who had acquired the dog as a puppy from Lord Chichester. 'The belief a Russian dog originated the strain is not borne out by dates,' he wrote.