A baby squirrel curls up into a tiny ball while his mother gently carries him in her mouth to the safety of the nest. The mother, an African tree squirrel, scurried along the branch with her child wrapped around her and took him to a new nest she had just finished building. Morkel Erasmus captured the moment in the Kruger National Park, South Africa. He says: "There was this squirrel scuttling along a thick branch and immediately I saw something was strange - her face looked huge. After looking through my camera lens I noticed what was going on. The African tree squirrel was carrying her young son in a most unusual manner. It seemed that she was holding the child with a biting grip to its tummy, while the child was clinging on to her with all its might. It was to prevent him falling off the branch and possibly becoming some predator's lunch."
Picture: Morkel Erasmus/solent
