International
Love-lorn tiger enters Nandankanan zoo
Love-lorn tiger enters Nandankanan zoo
AFP/Bhubaneswar
A lonely male tiger that left the jungle and entered a zoo in eastern India in quest of a mate has been trapped, an official of the state-run park said. |
“It seems to have strayed into the zoo attracted by a tigress,” said Sudarshan Panda, director of the Nandankanan Zoological Park near Bhubaneswar, capital of the eastern state of Orissa.
Panda said foresters kept a lookout for the animal, which had travelled from a protected state forest some 100km from the zoo and roamed around the facility last weekend.
“The tiger entered the zoo but it walked out,” Panda said, adding that a trap was laid and the cat was captured two days ago.
In a similar incident, a Royal Bengal tigress had jumped into a tiger enclosure attracted by the male’s mating call in January 1967.
The zoo at present has 24 tigers and officials say all male tigers there are descendants of one male tiger who was brought into the park in 1965.
A 2011 census counted about 1,700 tigers in the wild in India.
A century ago there were estimated to be 100,000 tigers in India, but tiger numbers have shrunk alarmingly in recent decades due to rampant poaching.