Hyderabad zoo gets African lion, cheetah pairs

TNN  

Dec 10, 2013

 

HYDERABAD: The much-awaited pairs of African lion and cheetah, gifted by the Saudi Arabian government, reached the city on Monday. The big cats are young, aged about a year-and-a-half, and would be put on display at the Nehru Zoological Park after a month of quarantine, basically to let them get used to the conditions and climate, officials said.

The African lions, officials said are valuable addition to the zoo's exhaustive collection as not many zoos in India have African lions, and it is after several years the Nehru zoo park will be exhibiting them. The zoo park currently has only Asiatic breed with a stock of about 18 lions.

Zoo officials said all precautions would be taken to acclimatize the big cats to local weather conditions. Each animal would be provided with a heater and a maximum temperature of 28 degrees to 30 degrees would be maintained. These animals were also kept in controlled conditions in Saudi Arabia due to hot weather conditions there with temperatures crossing 50 degrees Celsius.

"These are all tropical animals. The weather is very pleasant in Hyderabad right now. Nights are little colder but we would install heaters to keep them comfortable," said A Shankaran, curator, Zoo Park. "It's a gift from Saudi government. Transportation costs were also borne by the Saudi government," he added. The cats were transported in a cargo flight of Saudi Airlines to the city.

Prince Bandar Bin Saud Bin Mohammed Al Saud, president, Saudi Commission for Wildlife, had come to attend CoP-11 summit, held in Hyderabad during October 2012, and had visited the zoo park. Impressed with the zoo's upkeep and thousands of visitors thronging the zoo, he had promised the gift to zoo authorities that finally reached the zoo park on Monday.

With the addition of a pair of cheetah, zoo now has six cheetahs including two females. The four cheetahs, including three males and one female, which the Nehru zoo park got from the Czech Republic in an exchange programme earlier. "All cats are valuable. These are exotic animals not found here naturally. Most important role of our zoo is to show people the different wildlife that exists around the world," said Rajeev Mathew, a wildlife expert.

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