The sighting of pug marks of a leopard at Mysuru zoo has left the zoo authorities in a tizzy. Two cages have been placed on the premises to capture the big cat if it strays in again.
A male leopard was recently captured in an operation involving a team of forest officers, vets and zoo keepers after it strayed into the zoo, purportedly from the nearby Chamundi Hills. It was later released into the wild.
Ruling out the possibility of the same leopard straying into the zoo again, the authorities said it might be another leopard that gained entry after jumping over the compound wall separating the zoo from Karanji Lake Nature Park (KLNP). On Tuesday, which was a holiday for the zoo, pug marks were noticed at several places inside. The zoo’s executive director, C. Ravishankar, told The Hindu that pug marks were spotted at the vermicompost unit, near the zoo hospital, close to the enclosure housing lions, and along the compound wall adjacent to KLNP.
Incidentally, pug marks were also spotted at the under-construction aquarium complex, the KLNP road junction and inside the park.
According to Mr. Ravishankar, visitors were allowed into the zoo only after zoo staff combed the area from 6 a.m. to 8 a.m. on Wednesday and Thursday. Eight surveillance cameras have been installed along the compound wall bordering KLNP to track the leopard’s movement and help capture if it strays into the zoo again, he said.
While combing the area around the zoo and KLNP, the staff found a lot of street dogs around the spot where a circus had set up camp recently, close to the foothills of Chamundi. “Though no carcass of a stray dog killed by a carnivore was found, we suspect that the leopard might have arrived in search of prey and come into the zoo passing that spot,” Mr. Ravishankar said.
Troubling trend
So why are leopards straying into Mysuru zoo repeatedly?
The zoo was shut for a few hours after a wild leopard strayed into it and triggered panic on October 25. The big cat was found resting on a tree inside the enclosure of a lion-tailed macaque, which alerted its keeper by displaying unusual behaviour.
The leopard, aged about two, was caught after a three-hour operation and released backinto the forest.
Cases of wild animals, especially leopards, straying into the zoo were unheard of despite the zoo’s proximity to Chamundi Hills, which is considered an ideal habitat for leopards. People travelling up the hill by road at night have on many occasions spotted leopards resting on the concrete roadside barriers and on the road leading to the Nandi statue.
As part of a study, some researchers had put up camera traps in the hill to count the number of leopards in the territory. The camera traps tracked four leopards in the habitat.
