Well, we humans have pets, and often get concerned about vulnerable animals. Why should we be so surprised if our non-human relatives sometimes share this characteristic?

Increasingly we are discovering that other animals share all kinds of behaviours that were traditionally seen as exclusively human, and perhaps this is another of these.

I remember there was a similar kind of story a few years back from somewhere in the Balkans I think, with a bear protecting a child. And there was the case of a gorilla in a zoo looking after an injured boy who had fallen into the ape's enclosure.