The 15-day-old sacred baboon looks expectantly at a soft toy of a teddy bear double its size. A few seconds later, it tugs itself into the arms of the teddy bear and closes its eyes. From the past 10 days, the soft toy has been playing the part of this rare infant baboon’s mother in the Indira Gandhi Zoological Park. The zoo officials are not complaining. For, it is this make-belief world the little one has created which is helping it to survive after the mother turned hostile five days after its birth. The birth of the sacred baboon on February 9 had brought in good cheer among the zoo staff because of the rare occurrence. However, five days later it was rescued from the enclosure when its mother was found holding it with the tail and banging it against the wall. “The first five days, the mother was taking utmost care of the little one. But what happened in one night we do not know. The next day, the animal keeper found the mother turning hostile and trying to kill it and alerted the zoo officials,” said K.K. Pavane, junior doctor at the zoo.
The infant male sacred baboon is being looked after by the hospital staff in the zoo. “The breeding of sacred baboon in captivity is very rare in Indian zoos. A lot of care is being taken to acclimatise the new born in the hospital environment after it was separated from its hostile mother. It is currently being fed 30 ml Royal Canin milk every two to three hours and being carefully monitored by a team of one junior doctor and assistant staff. We are in touch with other zoos like the Nehru Zoological Park in Hyderabad which had encountered a similar incident a few years ago,” zoo curator B. Vijay Kumar told The Hindu . The sacred baboon also called the Hamadryas baboon was a sacred animal for the ancient Egyptians and appears in different roles in their religion. It was, hence, given the name of ‘sacred baboon’. Rarely seen in zoos in India, the Vizag zoo has one male and five females, apart from the new born, which were brought to the zoo from Germany in 2014.
“The male sacred baboon is an alpha male, a dominant one. It could be a reason behind such hostile behaviour of the mother,” explained Pavane. Incidentally, last year too, the mother had turned hostile after the birth of a young one, which could not be saved. In the recent past, a hyena cub was rescued from its mother following a similar incident.
While captive animal behaviour is unpredictable due to a variety of factors, it emphasises the need for neo-natal care unit in the zoos, something that the IGZP lacks.
Speaking about the plans to set up a unit, curator Kumar said: “We are planning to pool in funds from the zoo revenue and set up a small neo-natal care unit with a team of dedicated staff of junior and para veterinary doctors.”
