Little boy waits patiently on dock every morning for his giant stingray buddy to greet him

It’s a pretty common sight (and mostly heartwarming) for little kids to develop deep, special bonds with animals. However, those lovely encounters usually happens with pups or cats, and less likely with wild animals. Therefore, a little boy sharing a special friendship with a huge stingray is definitely something you won’t see everyday.

On top of it, the boy’s unusual friend is living in the ocean. But that doesn’t stop Joel to interact with his giant buddy. In fact, the little boy waits every morning on the dock for his friend to greet him. In exchange, the little human offers it some fresh fish! The unusual encounter happened in Gran Rey, a small fishing village with nearly 4,000 habitants, in the Canary Islands, Spain. A quiet place where people still live in a strong communion with wildlife. And since kids are also spending the days fishing on the steps near the village’s harbour, the bycatch usually goes back into the waters, attracting large marine animals, including stingrays.

Even though, watching the little boy offering treats to such a giant gentle is definitely a sight to behold. And thankfully, a tourist has captured the incredible moment on camera and uploaded it on Youtube. As expected the footage went viral as it gained almost 60 millions views so far. Even though, watching Joel feeding and petting his unlikely friend is heartwarming, you still need to know those are wild animals and although stingrays are not typically aggressive, one wrong move could be deadly.