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So, This Lion Is BFFs with a Pack of Dachshunds

It's true: Bonedigger and his gaggle of wiener dogs have been friends their whole lives. Huh.

 |  May 28th 2013  |   8 Contributions

Bonedigger is a five-year-old, 500-pound male lion. Milo is a seven-year-old, 11-pound Dachshund

After dinner, Milo licks the food from Bonedigger's teeth. 

His friends Bullet and Angel help, too. Bullet and Angel are also teeny-tiny Dachshunds. Bonedigger is still a 500-pound lion. 

Some relationships between animals of different species are "unlikely" -- your average duck making friends with a puppy, for instance. Some are "unexpected" -- let's call that anything involving a housecat.

But a lion making lifelong friends with three wiggly Dachshunds? That's WTF, front to back. Sorry for the veiled profanity, but look at this: 

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Goodness gracious. 

According to the Daily Mail, Milo and Bonedigger have been"inseparable for the past five years at the the Garold Wayne Interactive Zoological Park in Wynnewood, Oklahoma. Joe Schreibvogel, an animal expert who regularly posts videos from the park at YouTube's JoeExoticTV, first introduced his four Dachshund puppies to Bonedigger when he was just a four-week-old cub.

Bonedigger is mildly disabled, thanks to a metabolic bone disease, according to Schreibvogel figures this explains the bond the group has developed. Something has to. “The dogs thought it was just a big puppy and have loved each other since,” he told “I also think they know the lion is not as normal as the rest.”

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Milo focuses on the tongue. Lots of juices there.

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The dogs and Bonedigger also share big, hearty meals of raw meat. They spend their days with Bonedigger in his yard, and because he's a 500-pound lion, what Bonedigger wants, Bonedigger gets. 

“You do not ever try to take his dogs out of the yard,” Schreibvogel said. “[It] makes him very mad. They sleep on top of him.”

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Joe Schreibvogel tends to his remarkable family.

Milo, for one, may think there's more to him than 11 pounds of wiener dog. According to Schreibvogel,  "Milo does his best to copy Bonedigger when the lion tries puffing to communicate with other lions in the park." 

What's puffing? That's the growl lions use to speak to other prides, which can be heard more than a mile away. 

Imagine: In Oklahoma, a Dachshund named Milo is talking to lions in a zoo in their own language. I wouldn't be surprised if the lights are burning late at Pixar this week. 

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Photos via screengrabs from Joe Exotic TV



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