The New Year has brought in some good news for the Indira Gandhi Zoological Park (IGZP) here which announced the successful captive breeding of striped hyenas — a first in its history. This comes after two consecutive failures, when the two previous litters did not survive.
Of the three cubs in the new litter, the zoo authorities could save one male, which is currently being looked after at the zoo hospital after its mother turned hostile.
The two-month-old cub has been named Ayush.
The birth of the cub holds particular significance, because striped hyena is listed as a ‘Near Threatened’ species by the International Union for Conservation of Nature.
“Indira Gandhi Zoological Park is the third zoo in the country, after Patna and Mysuru, to have successfully recorded captive breeding of hyenas. The behaviour of hyenas is very unpredictable. Very often, it has been seen that the mother or the father of the litter killed the cubs due to stress or some unexplained behaviour pattern. So far, not much research has been done on breeding of hyenas in captivity, which makes it more difficult for zoo authorities to save a new litter,” zoo curator B. Vijaya Kumar told The Hindu .
The zoo now has two male and one female striped hyenas.
