Thirteen years ago, French couple Pierre and Elianne Thivillon adopted an infant gorilla after her mother refused to breastfeed it. They named the baby great ape Digit, and have raised it like their own daughter in what is believed to be the world’s only such human/gorilla living arrangement.

The Thivillons manage a zoo in Lyon, France, and for the last few years Digit has spent her days playing with the chimps in the monkey house.

However, every night the three Thivillons return home together, where they all sleep in the same room. In the morning, the otherwise childless couple makes Digit her favorite breakfast, which she eats at the table with them.

There have been many tales of monkeys and ape raised as humans who wound up turning vicious and attacking their owners or bystanders (including famous chimp attack victim Charla Nash). But the Thivillons say they trust the creature that could easily tear them limb-from-limb “implicitly,” even though their teenaged pet is not necessarily as sympathetic to humans outside the family.

Learn more about this interspecies cohabitation below:

[via Tosh.o]

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