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201307Jun14:37

Wild Ben­gal tiger in love walks in and out of Indian Zoo

Infor­ma­tion
pub­lished 07 June 2013 | mod­i­fied 30 May 2014
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Tiger sharpening clawsAt the end of April this year a wild Ben­gal tiger nav­i­gated the town of Nan­dankanan and nearby areas when after a few days this male tiger decided the local Zoo was his des­tiny. As a mat­ter of fact the male tiger had been spot­ted sev­eral times in the vicin­ity, the last few months before the inci­dent. There­fore, the Zoo had set up cam­eras and mon­i­tored the CCTV footage, to track the tiger’s move­ment. It is believed that he was in search for a female part­ner as he found its way to a tigress enclo­sure, for sure.

As the wild male tiger, esti­mated to be 57 years old, was look­ing for love, it was very easy to cap­ture him. He walked straight into the safari area which is close to the tigress’ enclo­sure when the emer­gency door was opened. So, the posse of twenty men who assem­bled to catch the ani­mal was redundant.

“We found that the tiger was mov­ing close to the enclo­sure of a tigress Sara and we believe it may have been attracted by the female,” Deputy Direc­tor Chitta Ran­jan Mishra told The New Indian Express. “Since the enclo­sure is located close to the safari, we decided to keep a watch on it and opened the emer­gency gate.”

With the food now brought to him ‘on a plat­ter’ the tres­passer made him­self at home in the Zoo. Nev­er­the­less, the National Tiger Con­ser­va­tion Author­ity of India pro­to­col on stray­ing tigers states clearly that the ani­mal should be released back into the wild.

The Cen­tral Zoo Author­ity guide­lines pre­scribe a 16-​foot height for enclo­sure wall, but this enclo­sure wall was higher. The tiger appar­ently climbed the walls using the angle irons fit­ted at 8 feet and 16 feet height to sup­port the struc­ture. There is enough evi­dence of it walk­ing on top of the wall
Chief Wildlife War­den, J D Sharma, told the New Indian Express »

After a month, while debate was still ongo­ing what to do, the tiger was trans­ferred to a dif­fer­ent enclo­sure. But the ani­mal didn’t wait for the final deci­sion on his release. Whether it was bore­dom or the desire to pur­sue new hori­zons, he escaped his newly acquired cap­tive life late in the evening of 1 June climb­ing the 18-​foot wall of the enclo­sure. Dur­ing the escape he dam­aged the wiring of the video cam­era that was installed, but pic­tures of the Hou­dini act have been captured.

So far, no one has been able to track down the tiger, though locals have been advised to be on alert that it may still be in the sur­round­ing forests.

Sur­pris­ingly, this is not the first time a tiger has walked into the Nan­dankanan Zoo. Ear­lier in 1967, a tigress had entered Nan­dankanan Zoo premises and remained cap­tive there. She was named Kanan. Nan­dankan Zoo’s safari cur­rently con­tains 24 Ben­gal tigers, includ­ing 8 white tigers.

(Source: Tree­hug­ger, 05.06.2013; Dec­can Her­ald, 30.04.2013; The New Indian Express, 01.05.2013 & 02.06.2013; Times of India, 01.05.2013)

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