According to the Book of Isaiah, an era of peace will eventually dawn when “the wolf shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid; and the calf and the young lion and the fatling together”. Though nothing is mentioned, per se, about a gorilla lounging with a young woman while the two enjoy videos of baby gorillas on a smartphone, a photo captured this week at the Louisville Zoo in the US state of Kentucky, depicting precisely this unlikely scenario, is doubtless a profound sign of something significant. But what?

While an almost invisible protective barrier separates the two figures in the photo (which has gone viral after Lindsey Costello posted the image on Instagram along with the exclamation “My new friend and I enjoy watching videos of baby gorillas!”), a slight glossiness in the glass allows the young woman’s reflection to ghost gauzily into her gentle companion’s dark, muscular shape. The result is an image that shuttles between a tenderness of touch and the cautiousness of an unbridgeable distance.