The city zoo is gearing up to receive a pair of Himalayan black bears from Nagaland. All that remains to be done now is to get the transportation cages ready.
The zoo would give away a pair of tigers as an exchange for the bears. Now there is only one Himalayan black bear at the city zoo. According to zoo officials, the tigers would be taken to Nagaland and the bears would be brought back in the same cages.
“We have to take the tigers in two cages; they are by nature solitary and will definitely attack each other if confined to the same cage,” a zoo official explained. The zoo has eight tigers now, four of which are female.
The zoo has also written to the Central Zoo Authority seeking permission to construct enclosures for the jackal, the spotted deer, and the hyena.
The zoo desperately needs more space for its deer whose burgeoning numbers threaten to derail any quality care that the zoo wishes to give them. Another animal that badly needs more space is the hippo. There are nine hippos at the zoo now and only three enclosures. With a view to giving the hippos more space, the zoo has started contacting counterparts across the country to see whether they would like to have a few stately hippos on their premises. “We even asked our counterpart in Rajasthan whether they wanted a hippo. Even one hippo less would mean a lot to us. But we have not been lucky so far,” a zoo official said.
Meantime, the new enclosure for the Anacondas, being constructed by Kerala Small Industries Development Corporation Ltd., is nearing completion.
