ONLINE ONLY: To love or eat

Is peace possible? Let's look at one case of animal friendship instead of lunch.\nA 3.5-inch dwarf hamster named Gohan and a four-foot rat snake named Aochan have become loving buddies at the Tokyo Zoo, according to a story from Yahoo News. Instead of demonstrating Darwinism at its finest -- i.e. snake swallows hamster as were the zookeeper's intentions -- Aochan passed on eating Gohan and instead befriended the rodent.\n"Gohan," according to the story, means "meal" in Japanese.\n"I've never seen anything like it," Aochan's keeper Kazuya Yamamoto said. "Gohan sometimes even climbs onto Aochan to take a nap on his back."\nAochan still munches on frozen rodents but "has so far shown no signs of gobbling up Gohan," according to the story. Instead of providing a meal for mouth, the two have instead become friends and they continue to share a cage.\nA friend of mine once proclaimed Aochan and Gohan's friendship provides proof "peace is possible." If a snake and a hamster can become friends, he said, anything is possible -- including peace.\nAochan and Gohan's love affair is an example of possible peace on the one hand. But on the other hand, their journey provides proof that other animals besides humans can feel alone and seek companionship.\nAochan did not eat Gohan because he wanted a friend. Might the snake have befriended the hamster and denied himself a just-due meal because he wanted another living creature to keep him company while he slithers around in his "cage?"\n"Aochan seems to enjoy Gohan's company very much," Yamamoto said.\nZoos are incredible resources for a community. The animals' zoo homes are often far better than life in the "wild," and the animals are often befriended and loved by their human keepers and visitors. In a very sad sense, might even the best treatment of a wild animal in captivity only further deepen the void of natural instinct the animal no doubt possesses?\nThe Tokyo Zoo should be applauded for allowing Aochan the opportunity to befriend Gohan, and visitors now have the opportunity to observe a very unlikely union existing in a very unpredictable world. Aochan and Gohan are reminders that snakes and hamsters, like humans, adapt to the existing conditions of their environment using whatever coping mechanisms are available.\nAochan and Gohan did not choose one another in the name of peace. They chose one another because they are in the same position together -- they are caged in a glass sideshow within an exhibit at a zoo. Why not hug instead of battle?\nNow I say to my friend, show me a Hamas-led Palestine that recognizes Israel and renounces violence, an extremist-led Iran that recognizes the Holocaust existed and a nuclear weapon-free world and I would then agree that peace is possible. Until then, Aochan and Gohan only prove peace can happen if animals are put together in a situation where violence is the expected norm and life is but a sideshow.