Remember Koko, the gorilla who could communicate through sign language? One interesting story about Koko that really stuck in our minds was that she kept cats. A primate caring for a feline like it was her own baby isn't something you see everyday, but what would happen if the roles were switched?

At the Okavango Delta of Botswana, camera crew filming a leopard during a kill got more than what they came for. The crew had been following a female leopard (whom they dubbed as "Legadema") for three and a half years now. All if this was for the National Geographic wildlife documentary "Eye Of The Leopard", and on that particular day of filming, they happened to have caught her as she finished a kill. The prey happened to be a baboon, one of the leopard's main food sources and their natural enemy.

Legadema stood over the baboon's corpse when something stirred and called out. A newborn baboon crawled toward the leopard as the crew watched, fully expecting Legadema to pounce at it. But after a moment's hesitation, the leopard picked up the baby, carried it to safety, and proceeded to care for it like it was her own cub.

Legadema even carried the baby up a tree to protect it from hyenas, and the baby fell off the tree a number of times but the leopard quickly came after it. Dereck Joubert, one of the filmmakers, has remarked that Legadema was "like a cat looking after her own kitten, rather than predator and prey. She was part inquisitive cub, part mother - and forgot momentarily that she was a hunter. It was quite extraordinary and very moving to watch."

Sadly, Legadema's efforts were in vain as the baby simply couldn't survive without it's mother. When the feline realized that the baby baboon had died, she moved on. The filmmakers still check up on Legadema from time to time and there's news that she would soon be able to care for her own cub.

Awww.