Feel all the feels by looking at this giraffe 'kiss' a dying cancer patient

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Feel all the feels by looking at this giraffe 'kiss' a dying cancer patient
(Image credit: Twitter)

Here's your tearjerker viral moment of the day: A dying cancer patient wanted to live out his final moments near his favorite animals, so a Dutch zoo arranged it. The 54-year-old man, only identified as Mario, laid in a hospital bed at the giraffe habitat at Rotterdam's Diergaarde Blijdorp zoo and waited for the gentle animals to approach him. The man is reportedly mentally handicapped and worked as a maintenance man at the zoo.

"You could totally see him light up," a zookeeper told a Dutch newspaper. "It's very special to see that those animals recognize him, and sense that he isn't doing well." -- Jordan Valinsky

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Jordan Valinsky is the lead writer for Speed Reads. Before joining The Week, he wrote for New York Observer's tech blog, Betabeat, and tracked the intersection between popular culture and the internet for The Daily Dot. He graduated with a degree in online journalism from Ohio University.