Your morning adorable: Dog adopts lion cub in Hungarian zoo

Zimba, a 3-month-old lion cub, is one of the most popular residents at Hungary's Gyoengyoes Zoo, according to the Sun.  Since the cub's arrival (the zoo received him as a gift from a private Italian donor), he's had an unusual companion in the form of Bogi, a 3-year-old male puli.  (We know what you're thinking: Where are Bogi's cords?  While many puli owners -- and owners of a related breed, the komondor -- choose to let their dogs' fur grow naturally into cords, others keep their coats brushed instead. While they look less like a Beck album cover that way, we bet they're easier to dry after a bath!)

Bogi has taken on the role of foster parent for Zimba, who came to the zoo without his mother. Fortunately for Zimba, he has a doting little herding dog to pick up the slack!  See another photo of these two after the jump.

Your morning adorable: Dog adopts orphaned macaque monkey in Thailand

Monks at the Tung Luang Buddhist temple in Thailand's Chiang Mai province recently began caring for a 3-month-old macaque monkey whose mother was killed by a hunter. 

Helping them with the task of raising the young monkey is Tan, a resident "temple dog" who, Metro U.K. reports, has not only taken the monkey under his wing but even voluntarily shares his food with it!

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Your morning adorable: Dachshund adopts tiger cub in German zoo
Your morning adorable: Dog nurses red panda cubs in Chinese zoo

-- Lindsay Barnett

Photo: European Pressphoto Agency

Agoura Hills dog adopts baby squirrel

A Shih Tzu mother of three puppies has taken one extra baby -- a squirrel -- under her paw and is raising it as her own, our colleagues at KTLA report.

Princess, the admirable surrogate mother, belongs to Doug and Corinne Thomas of Agoura Hills.  A neighbor found the tiny infant squirrel, a female, after she was apparently abandoned by her mother.  But the neighbor had no luck convincing the baby to eat and worried about her chances for survival.  A plan was hatched: Give the tiny creature to Princess, who had recently given birth to her own litter.

In short order, Princess was caring for the squirrel as if it were her own offspring, and the Thomases say that both squirrel and puppies are thriving. 

"If humans could be more like Princess and the squirrel and the little pups, we would all get along a lot better," Corinne Thomas told KTLA.  "It doesn't matter what you have on the outside, it's on the inside."

When she's not busy with parenting duties, Princess is a therapy dog, working with autistic children.  When the puppies are old enough, the Thomases hope they'll receive new homes where they can follow in their mother's footsteps -- with families raising autistic kids. 

As for the squirrel -- whom they've given the (let's face it) rather uninspired name "Squirl" -- the Thomases plan to keep her, since she can't be rereleased into the wild.  They hope she also will join her adoptive mother and work with autistic kids in the future.

-- Lindsay Barnett

Video: KTLA

Your morning adorable: Dog nurses red panda cubs in Chinese zoo

At the Taiyuan Zoo in northern China's Shanxi province, a red panda gave birth to two cubs unexpectedly on June 25. "No one knew she was pregnant" because the panda's bushy fur and general plumpness masked her telltale burgeoning stomach, zoo employee Ha Guojiang told China's state news agency. 

Immediately after the two cubs were born, they were abandoned by their mother -- so zoo staff set about finding a suitable adoptive mother. Several female dogs that had recently given birth to their own litters of puppies were considered for the gig, the Associated Press reports.  Zoo staff chose this willing candidate, a white mixed-breed owned by a farmer who lives in a neighboring suburb. 

She takes to her duties so enthusiastically, Ha said, that she sometimes even denies her own puppy milk in favor of the red pandas. The cubs are reportedly thriving and have doubled in length over the last weeks (they now measure about 8 inches long).  As adults, they'll be about the size of a house cat (but with much larger, bushier tails than most cats) and spend most of their time in trees. 

Red pandas are native to China, Myanmar and Nepal; they're classified as endangered because of habitat loss as a result of deforestation.  See another photo of the adoptive mom and cubs after the jump!

Your morning adorable: Australian shepherd nurses orphaned kittens

When a mother cat was hit by a car and killed last month in Snohomish County, Wash., north of Seattle, her four kittens were orphaned. Fortunately for them, they happened to be living in the barn belonging to Colleen and Robert Nesseth -- and they had a willing surrogate mother in the form of the Nesseths' Australian shepherd, Lakota.

Lakota took an immediate interest in the kittens, whom the Nesseths brought inside in a box. She began caring for them, grooming them and even letting them suckle (although the Nesseths aren't sure whether  she's actually producing milk for them -- they bottle-feed the kittens just to be sure they are fed).

Lakota gave birth to her own litter of puppies once and has even cared for a kitten in the past.  "It just shows you don't have to give birth to be a mother," Colleen Nesseth told the Everett Herald.. 

Your morning adorable: Dachshund adopts tiger cub in German zoo

A tiger cub born last weekend at Germany's Stroehen Zoo has already experienced the loss of two mother figures in its short life.  The cub was rejected by its mother shortly after its birth.  Things began looking up when the cub was adopted by Monster, a wirehaired dachshund that belonged to the zoo's owners.  But Monster himself died unexpectedly.

After Monster's death, his daughter Bessi (shown here with the cub) took over mothering duties -- indeed, a zoo representative said she "fell in love" with the infant and has proved a capable guardian.

More photos of Bessi and her as-yet-unnamed charge after the jump!