Now Amur the tiger teaches his friend Timur the goat how to hunt

The friendship between the two animals has surprised not only keepers in the Russian Far East but much of the world. The goat was intended as the tiger's lunch but instead they became best mates. While they live in adjoining cages, they spend their days together strolling in the grounds of the park.

Dmitry Mezentsev, director of Shkotovo safari-park, said: 'Sometimes during walks the tiger behaves as if he is hunting. Timur copies the behaviour of the predator, and imitates him. But he is not likely to start hunting.'

Timur - whose bravery won praise from around the world - is becoming nervous when he is not alongside his big cat protector. 

'For two nights in a row Timur stays by the bars separating his cage from the tiger',' he said. 'He refuses to stay in his shelter and declines to eat his evening meal. He's more worried when the tiger is not around and when he is surrounded by people. He wants to be around the tiger to get rid off stress.'

Ten days into a relationship nature did not intend, the goat now considers humans as 'a threat, as predators'. The latest update is that Amur and Timur are 'as friendly and happy as ever'.

Despite this, a well-known Russian animal handler has demanded that the creatures should be permanently separated since the tiger can suddenly turn on the goat, despite his earlier refusal to eat him as a meal. 

'If the tiger for some reason misses one or two feeds - naturally, there can be no mercy. The instinct to win,' said Edgar Zapashy.

He warned: 'The goat can to try to run away, and he will become a target by doing so. Instinct will work - and that's all. What's more, the goat is not the smartest animal. He could be so brazen that he will run and attack the tiger and get a real resistance. 

'On the other hand perhaps they will live happily ever after, but it is better not to continue this experiment. I do not see any sense in this. They have created a funny precedent. Let's keep the good and kind fairy-tale ending.'

But Vladimir Krever, WWF-Russia bio-diversity coordinator, has predicted that this all-male relationship could become even more unexpected.

'One shouldn't apply terms of romantic novels to animals. But anything can happen in this unusual pair,' he told Moskovsky Komsomolets, predicting unexpected intimacy between them.

'As long as the predator is not hungry, the goat has a lot more chance to survive. However, there have been cases when even a hungry tiger didn't consider an animal he normally hunts on as food. Such examples of this paradoxical friendship can't be subject to predictions because it is related to particular intellectual features of this particular predator. There have been very limited studies of that.'