Matteo Valcu is only 12 years old, but he has already spent two-thirds of his life communicating with Alpine marmots. This is not training, not a game, and not even mind reading, but something that adults just call “friendship”. Although in fact we are talking about an extraordinary connection between a person and an animal — marmots do not behave like this with anyone except Matteo.
Mikaela’s mother works as a school teacher in Innsbruck and since childhood instilled in her son a love of wildlife. Every year, since Matteo’s 4th birthday, they leave for two weeks to live in the Alps and chat with marmots in their natural habitat. From the outside, it seems that the animals welcome their idol — they are not afraid of the boy at all and behave with him like old friends. An amazing connection.
Not everyone believes that this is so — when the photo of Matteo almost hugging marmots began to spread on the Internet in 2012, many considered it a forgery. They say that marmots are trained or even painted, in real life this does not happen. And others, on the contrary, began to envy the boy — it’s not every day that you see what is called “the unity of man with nature” in fiction, but in fact turned into a flat stamp. But Matteo’s friendship with the marmots is real, sincere and will probably continue further.
