Alipore Zoological Gardens
Encyclopedia
The Alipore Zoological Gardens (also informally called the Alipore Zoo, Calcutta Zoo or Kolkata Zoo) is India
's oldest formally stated zoological park (as opposed to royal and British menageries) and a big tourist attraction in Kolkata
, West Bengal
. It has been open as a zoo since 1876, and covers 45 acres (18.2 ha). It is probably best known as the home of the now expired Aldabra Giant Tortoise
Adwaita
, which was reputed to have been over 250 years old when it died. It is also home to one of the few captive breeding
projects involving the Manipur
Brow-antlered Deer. The zoo has drawn a lot of criticism from the zoo community and conservationists in the past few decades, mainly for its cramped cages, as well as for its Panthera hybrid
breeding program.
A 4-month-old female baby elephant, deserted by her family, has been raised and contented to be the newest member of the zoo. She has been named 'Baby'.
Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington
established around 1800 in his summer home at Barrackpore
near Kolkata, as part of the Indian Natural History Project. However, Wellesley returned to England
with his brother Richard Wellesley
- then Governor General of India, and the animals were then looked after by the famous Scottish
physician
zoologist Francis Buchanan-Hamilton
. The collection from this era are documented by watercolours by Charles D'Oyly, and a visit by the famous French
botanist Victor Jacquemont
. Sir Stamford Raffles visited the menagerie in 1810, encountering his first tapir
there, and doubtless used some aspects of the menagerie as an inspiration for the London Zoo
.
The foundation of zoos in major cities around the world caused a growing thought among the British community in Kolkata that the menagerie should be upgraded to a formal zoological garden. Credence to such arguments was lent by an article in the now-defunct Calcutta Journal of Natural Historys July 1841 issue. In 1873, the Lieutenant-Governor Sir Richard Temple formally proposed the formation of a zoo in Kolkata, and the Government finally allotted land for the zoo based on to the joint petition of the Asiatic Society
and Agri-Horticultural Society.
The zoo was formally opened in Alipore
- a posh Kolkata suburb, and inaugurated on 1 January 1876 by Edward VII, then Prince of Wales
. (Some reports place the inauguration on an alternate date of 27 December 1875). The initial stock consisted of the private menagerie of Carl Louis Schwendler
(1838 – 1882), a German
electrician
who was posted in India for a feasibility study of electrically lighting Indian Railway stations. Gifts were also accepted from the general public. The initial collection consisted of the following animals:
African Buffalo
, Zanzibar
Ram, Domestic sheep
, Four-horned sheep, Hybrid Kashmiri Goat, Indian Antelope
, Indian Gazelle, Sambar Deer
, Spotted Deer
and Hog Deer
It is not clear whether the Aldabra Giant Tortoise
Adwaita
was among the opening stock of animals. The animals at Barrackpore Park were added to the collection over the first few months of 1886, significantly increasing its size. The zoo was thrown open to the public on 6 May 1876.
It grew based on gifts from British and Indian nobility - like Raja Suryakanta Acharya of Mymensingh
in whose honour the open air tiger enclosure is named the Mymensingh Enclosure. Other contributors who donated part or all of their private menagerie to the Alipore Zoo included the Maharaja of Mysore
Krishna Raja Wadiyar IV
.
The park was initially run by an honorary managing committee which included Schwendler and the famous botanist George King
. The first Indian superintendent of the zoo was Ram Brahma Sanyal
, who did much to improve the standing of the Alipore Zoo and achieved good captive breeding
success in an era when such initiatives were rarely heard of. One such success story of the zoo was a live birth of the rare Sumatran Rhinoceros
in 1889. The next pregnancy in captivity occurred at the Cincinnati Zoo in 1997, but ended with a miscarriage. Cincinnati Zoo finally recorded a live birth in 2001. Alipore Zoo was a pioneer among zoos in the 19th century and the early part of the 20th century under Sanyal, who published the first handbook on captive animal keeping. The zoo had an unusually high scientific standard for its time, and the record of the Cladotaenia genus (Cohn, 1901) of parasites are based upon cestodes
(flatworm) found in an Australia
n bird that died at the zoo.
The zoo has attracted a lot of criticism over the years for keeping single and unpaired specimens of rare species like the Banteng
, Great Indian One-horned Rhinoceros, Crowned Crane
and the Lion-tailed Macaque
. Lack of breeding and exchange programs has led to the elimination of individuals and populations of environmentally vulnerable species like the Southern Cassowary
, wild Yak
, Giant Eland
, Slow Loris
and Echidna
.
The cramped, unsuitable and unhygienic conditions inside the cages, and in the zoo in general has been criticized for long. The death of a Great Indian One-horned Rhinoceros sparked off speculation about the veterinary efficiency at the zoo. ZooCheck Canada found conditions in the zoo unsatisfactory in 2004. The zoo director Subir Choudhury has gone on record in 2006 saying:
The zoo has also been criticized for the quality of its animal - visitor interaction. Teasing of animals was a common occurrence at the zoo, though corrective measures are underway. On 1 January 1996 the tiger Shiva mauled two visitors as they tried to garland it, killing one, and earning him the runner-up for the Darwin Awards
. Another mauling leading to a death occurred in 2000.
The zoo has also been criticized for its animal - keeper
relations. A chimpanzee attacked and severely injured its keeper in Alipore Zoo, and numerous other incidents have been reported including the case of an elephant trampling its mahout
to death in 1963 which had to be put down. In 2001, it was revealed that zoo staff drugged the Great Indian One-horned Rhinoceros into relieving itself more often than normal, which enabled them to collect the urine and sell it on the black market as an anti-impotence medicine.
s and tiger
s to produce strains like tigon
s, and litigons (see Panthera hybrid
). The zoo bred two tigons in the 1970s — Rudrani (b. 1971) and Ranjini (b.1973) were bred from the cross between a Royal Bengal Tiger and an African Lion. Rudrani went on to produce 7 offsprings by mating with an Asiatic Lion
, producing "litigon"s. One of these litigons, named Cubanacan survived to adulthood, stood over 5.5 feet (1.7 m) tall, measured over 11.5 feet (3.5 m) and weighed over 800 pounds. It died in 1991 at the age of 15. It was marketed by the zoo as the world's largest living big cat. All such hybrid males were sterile. Quite a few of these creatures suffered from genetic abnormalities and many died prematurely. Rangini, the last tigon in the zoo, died in 1999 as the oldest known tigon. The zoo has stopped breeding hybrids after the 1985 legislation passed by the Government of India
banning breeding of panthera hybrids after a vigorous campaign by the World Wide Fund for Nature
(then World Wildlife Fund).
The zoo remains one of the most popular winter tourist attractions in Kolkata, but revenue earned is low as gate costs are highly subsidized. The ticket prices at the gate increased from Rs 5 to Rs 10 in the winter of 2003 (a doubling from approx. 12 c to 25 c in the exchange rate of the time). The footfall figures in 2005 showed an annual visitation of almost 20 lakh
(2,000,000) — more than any other tourist attraction in Kolkata, and a peak of over 25,000 on Christmas Day and New Year's Day
.
The zoo displays a large number of crowd-pulling megafauna
, including the Royal Bengal Tiger, African Lion, Jaguar
, Hippopotamus
, Great Indian One-horned Rhinoceros, Reticulated Giraffe, Grant's Zebra
, Emu
, Dromedary Camel and Indian Elephant
. Previously, other megafauna like the Panthera hybrids and the Giant Eland
were present.
The zoo sported a large collection of attractive birds, including some threatened species up until the 1980s - large parrots including a number of Macaw
species, Conure
s, lories and lorikeets; other large birds like Touracos and Hornbill
s; colourful game birds like the Golden Pheasant
, Lady Amherst's Pheasant
and Swinhoe's Pheasant
and some large flightless birds like the Emu
, Cassowary
and Ostrich
. However, lack of pairing and exchange programs have caused a significant decline in the populations, causing some of the populations to die out.
The Calcutta Aquarium lies across the street from the zoo, and is affiliated to the zoo.
"Adwaita
", gifted to the zoo in 1875 (brought by British seafarers to Lord Clive's menagerie from Seychelles
), and reputedly over 250 years old when it died in 2006 — a contender for the longest lived animal.
s and the common Reticulated Giraffe. While it has successfully bred some megafauna, its rate of breeding rare species has not been very successful, often due to lack of initiative and funding. One notable exception is the breeding programme of the Manipur Brow-antlered Deer, or Thamin which has been brought back from the brink of extinction
by the breeding program at the Alipore Zoo.
(CZAI). It has also increased the number of open air enclosures. A move to a suburban location was also contemplated, but was not undertaken based on the recommendations of the CZAI, which claimed the Alipore site was of historical significance. The CZAI also cleared the zoo of malpractices in an evaluation performed in late 2005, even though the zoo has continued to attract bad press.
for several migratory birds like the Sarus Crane
, and sports a sizable wetland inside the zoo grounds. Since the zoo is enveloped by urban settlements for miles, the zoo wetlands are the only resting spot for some of the birds and are a focus of conservationists in Kolkata. However, the number of migratory bird visiting the zoo dropped from documented highs by over 40% in the winter of 2004–2005. Experts attribute the causes of the decline to increased pollution, new construction of highrises in the area, increasing threats in the summer grounds of the birds and declining quality of the water bodies at the zoo.
India
India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...
's oldest formally stated zoological park (as opposed to royal and British menageries) and a big tourist attraction in Kolkata
Kolkata
Kolkata , formerly known as Calcutta, is the capital of the Indian state of West Bengal. Located on the east bank of the Hooghly River, it was the commercial capital of East India...
, West Bengal
West Bengal
West Bengal is a state in the eastern region of India and is the nation's fourth-most populous. It is also the seventh-most populous sub-national entity in the world, with over 91 million inhabitants. A major agricultural producer, West Bengal is the sixth-largest contributor to India's GDP...
. It has been open as a zoo since 1876, and covers 45 acres (18.2 ha). It is probably best known as the home of the now expired Aldabra Giant Tortoise
Aldabra Giant Tortoise
The Aldabra giant tortoise , from the islands of the Aldabra Atoll in the Seychelles, is one of the largest tortoises in the world....
Adwaita
Adwaita
Adwaita was the name of a male Aldabra giant tortoise in the Alipore Zoological Gardens of Kolkata, India...
, which was reputed to have been over 250 years old when it died. It is also home to one of the few captive breeding
Captive breeding
Captive breedingis the process of breeding animals in human controlled environments with restricted settings, such as wildlife reserves, zoos and other conservation facilities; sometimes the process is construed to include release of individual organisms to the wild, when there is sufficient...
projects involving the Manipur
Manipur
Manipur is a state in northeastern India, with the city of Imphal as its capital. Manipur is bounded by the Indian states of Nagaland to the north, Mizoram to the south and Assam to the west; it also borders Burma to the east. It covers an area of...
Brow-antlered Deer. The zoo has drawn a lot of criticism from the zoo community and conservationists in the past few decades, mainly for its cramped cages, as well as for its Panthera hybrid
Panthera hybrid
The four living species of Panthera genus may produce a number of hybrid crosses...
breeding program.
A 4-month-old female baby elephant, deserted by her family, has been raised and contented to be the newest member of the zoo. She has been named 'Baby'.
History
The zoo had its roots in a private menagerie established by Governor General of BengalBengal
Bengal is a historical and geographical region in the northeast region of the Indian Subcontinent at the apex of the Bay of Bengal. Today, it is mainly divided between the sovereign land of People's Republic of Bangladesh and the Indian state of West Bengal, although some regions of the previous...
Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington
Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington
Field Marshal Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington, KG, GCB, GCH, PC, FRS , was an Irish-born British soldier and statesman, and one of the leading military and political figures of the 19th century...
established around 1800 in his summer home at Barrackpore
Barrackpore
Barrackpore or Barrackpur is headquarters of Barrackpore subdivision in North 24 Parganas district in the Indian state of West Bengal. The town was a military and administrative center under British rule, and was the scene of several acts of rebellion against Britain during the 19th century...
near Kolkata, as part of the Indian Natural History Project. However, Wellesley returned to England
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
with his brother Richard Wellesley
Richard Wellesley, 1st Marquess Wellesley
Richard Colley Wesley, later Wellesley, 1st Marquess Wellesley, KG, PC, PC , styled Viscount Wellesley from birth until 1781, was an Anglo-Irish politician and colonial administrator....
- then Governor General of India, and the animals were then looked after by the famous Scottish
Scottish people
The Scottish people , or Scots, are a nation and ethnic group native to Scotland. Historically they emerged from an amalgamation of the Picts and Gaels, incorporating neighbouring Britons to the south as well as invading Germanic peoples such as the Anglo-Saxons and the Norse.In modern use,...
physician
Physician
A physician is a health care provider who practices the profession of medicine, which is concerned with promoting, maintaining or restoring human health through the study, diagnosis, and treatment of disease, injury and other physical and mental impairments...
zoologist Francis Buchanan-Hamilton
Francis Buchanan-Hamilton
Dr Francis Buchanan, later known as Francis Hamilton but often referred to as Francis Buchanan-Hamilton was a Scottish physician who made significant contributions as a geographer, zoologist, and botanist while living in India.The standard botanical author abbreviation Buch.-Ham. is applied to...
. The collection from this era are documented by watercolours by Charles D'Oyly, and a visit by the famous French
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
botanist Victor Jacquemont
Victor Jacquemont
Victor Jacquemont was a French botanist and geologist.Born in Paris on August 8, 1801, Victor Jacquemont was the youngest of four sons of Venceslas Jacquemont and Rose Laisné....
. Sir Stamford Raffles visited the menagerie in 1810, encountering his first tapir
Tapir
A Tapir is a large browsing mammal, similar in shape to a pig, with a short, prehensile snout. Tapirs inhabit jungle and forest regions of South America, Central America, and Southeast Asia. There are four species of Tapirs: the Brazilian Tapir, the Malayan Tapir, Baird's Tapir and the Mountain...
there, and doubtless used some aspects of the menagerie as an inspiration for the London Zoo
London Zoo
London Zoo is the world's oldest scientific zoo. It was opened in London on 27 April 1828, and was originally intended to be used as a collection for scientific study. It was eventually opened to the public in 1847...
.
The foundation of zoos in major cities around the world caused a growing thought among the British community in Kolkata that the menagerie should be upgraded to a formal zoological garden. Credence to such arguments was lent by an article in the now-defunct Calcutta Journal of Natural Historys July 1841 issue. In 1873, the Lieutenant-Governor Sir Richard Temple formally proposed the formation of a zoo in Kolkata, and the Government finally allotted land for the zoo based on to the joint petition of the Asiatic Society
Asiatic Society
The Asiatic Society was founded by Sir William Jones on January 15, 1784 in a meeting presided over by Sir Robert Chambers, the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court at the Fort William in Calcutta, then capital of the British Raj, to enhance and further the cause of Oriental research. At the time of...
and Agri-Horticultural Society.
The zoo was formally opened in Alipore
Alipore
Alipore is headquarters of South 24 Parganas district and a neighbourhood in South Kolkata in the Indian state of West Bengal.Alipore, Kolkata, not to be confused with Alipore, Gujarat, is one of the poshest and costliest localities in Kolkata, along with the area Ballygunge...
- a posh Kolkata suburb, and inaugurated on 1 January 1876 by Edward VII, then Prince of Wales
Prince of Wales
Prince of Wales is a title traditionally granted to the heir apparent to the reigning monarch of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and the 15 other independent Commonwealth realms...
. (Some reports place the inauguration on an alternate date of 27 December 1875). The initial stock consisted of the private menagerie of Carl Louis Schwendler
Carl Louis Schwendler
Carl Louis Schwendler was a German electrician and one of the first proponents of the Tungsten based incandescent light bulb. He also published an influential textbook on telegraphs, and worked in British India at a senior post in the Telegraph Department...
(1838 – 1882), a German
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
electrician
Electrician
An electrician is a tradesman specializing in electrical wiring of buildings, stationary machines and related equipment. Electricians may be employed in the installation of new electrical components or the maintenance and repair of existing electrical infrastructure. Electricians may also...
who was posted in India for a feasibility study of electrically lighting Indian Railway stations. Gifts were also accepted from the general public. The initial collection consisted of the following animals:
African Buffalo
African Buffalo
The African buffalo, affalo, nyati, Mbogo or Cape buffalo is a large African bovine. It is not closely related to the slightly larger wild Asian water buffalo, but its ancestry remains unclear...
, Zanzibar
Zanzibar
Zanzibar ,Persian: زنگبار, from suffix bār: "coast" and Zangi: "bruin" ; is a semi-autonomous part of Tanzania, in East Africa. It comprises the Zanzibar Archipelago in the Indian Ocean, off the coast of the mainland, and consists of numerous small islands and two large ones: Unguja , and Pemba...
Ram, Domestic sheep
Domestic sheep
Sheep are quadrupedal, ruminant mammals typically kept as livestock. Like all ruminants, sheep are members of the order Artiodactyla, the even-toed ungulates. Although the name "sheep" applies to many species in the genus Ovis, in everyday usage it almost always refers to Ovis aries...
, Four-horned sheep, Hybrid Kashmiri Goat, Indian Antelope
Blackbuck
Blackbuck is a species of antelope native to the Indian subcontinent. Their range decreased sharply during the 20th century. Since 2003, the IUCN lists the species as near threatened....
, Indian Gazelle, Sambar Deer
Sambar Deer
The Sambar ' is a large deer native to southern and southeast Asia. Although it primarily refers to R. unicolor, the name "Sambar" is also sometimes used to refer to the Philippine Deer and the Rusa Deer...
, Spotted Deer
Chital
The chital or cheetal , also known as chital deer, spotted deer or axis deer is a deer which commonly inhabits wooded regions of Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, and in small numbers in Pakistan...
and Hog Deer
Hog Deer
The Hog Deer is a small deer whose habitat ranges from Pakistan, through northern India, to mainland southeast Asia...
Aldabra Giant Tortoise
The Aldabra giant tortoise , from the islands of the Aldabra Atoll in the Seychelles, is one of the largest tortoises in the world....
Adwaita
Adwaita
Adwaita was the name of a male Aldabra giant tortoise in the Alipore Zoological Gardens of Kolkata, India...
was among the opening stock of animals. The animals at Barrackpore Park were added to the collection over the first few months of 1886, significantly increasing its size. The zoo was thrown open to the public on 6 May 1876.
It grew based on gifts from British and Indian nobility - like Raja Suryakanta Acharya of Mymensingh
Mymensingh
Mymensingh , pronounced moy-mon-shing-haw, is a city of Bangladesh situated on the river Brahmaputra. It is the headquarters of the administrative unit Mymensingh District. Mymensingh is the anglicized pronunciation of the original name Momenshahi, referring to a ruler called Momen Shah. The cadet...
in whose honour the open air tiger enclosure is named the Mymensingh Enclosure. Other contributors who donated part or all of their private menagerie to the Alipore Zoo included the Maharaja of Mysore
Maharaja of Mysore
Maharaja of Mysore was the principal title of the ruler of the Kingdom of Mysore in India.The Wodeyar dynasty founded a feudatory principality in 1399, which grew into the Kingdom of Mysore...
Krishna Raja Wadiyar IV
Krishna Raja Wadiyar IV
Krishna Raja Wadiyar IV , also known popularly as Nalvadi Krishna Raja Wadiyar , was the ruling Maharaja of the princely state of Mysore from 1902 until his death in 1940. He is regarded as one of the most celebrated rulers among the Indian States when India was still under British rule...
.
The park was initially run by an honorary managing committee which included Schwendler and the famous botanist George King
George King (botanist)
Sir George King , was a British botanist appointed superintendent of the Royal Botanic Garden, Calcutta in 1871, and the first Director of the Botanical Survey of India from 1890. King was awarded the Linnean Medal in 1901....
. The first Indian superintendent of the zoo was Ram Brahma Sanyal
Ram Brahma Sanyal
Ram Brahma Sanyal was the first superintendent of the Alipore Zoological Gardens in Kolkata . He was a pioneer in captive breeding, and was one of the first zookeepers with a training as a biologist...
, who did much to improve the standing of the Alipore Zoo and achieved good captive breeding
Captive breeding
Captive breedingis the process of breeding animals in human controlled environments with restricted settings, such as wildlife reserves, zoos and other conservation facilities; sometimes the process is construed to include release of individual organisms to the wild, when there is sufficient...
success in an era when such initiatives were rarely heard of. One such success story of the zoo was a live birth of the rare Sumatran Rhinoceros
Sumatran Rhinoceros
The Sumatran Rhinoceros is a member of the family Rhinocerotidae and one of five extant rhinoceroses. It is the only extant species of the genus Dicerorhinus. It is the smallest rhinoceros, although is still a large mammal. This rhino stands high at the shoulder, with a head-and-body length of ...
in 1889. The next pregnancy in captivity occurred at the Cincinnati Zoo in 1997, but ended with a miscarriage. Cincinnati Zoo finally recorded a live birth in 2001. Alipore Zoo was a pioneer among zoos in the 19th century and the early part of the 20th century under Sanyal, who published the first handbook on captive animal keeping. The zoo had an unusually high scientific standard for its time, and the record of the Cladotaenia genus (Cohn, 1901) of parasites are based upon cestodes
Cestoda
This article describes the flatworm. For the medical condition, see Tapeworm infection.Cestoda is the name given to a class of parasitic flatworms, commonly called tapeworms, of the phylum Platyhelminthes. Its members live in the digestive tract of vertebrates as adults, and often in the bodies...
(flatworm) found in an Australia
Australia
Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...
n bird that died at the zoo.
Disrepute
Pressed for space as Kolkata developed, and lacking adequate government funding, the zoo attracted a lot of controversy in the latter half of the 20th century due to cramped living conditions of the animals, lack of initiative at breeding rare species, and for cross-breeding experiments between species.The zoo has attracted a lot of criticism over the years for keeping single and unpaired specimens of rare species like the Banteng
Banteng
The banteng , also known as tembadau, is a species of wild cattle found in Southeast Asia.Banteng have been domesticated in several places in Southeast Asia, and there are around 1.5 million domestic banteng, which are called Bali cattle. These animals are used as working animals and for their meat...
, Great Indian One-horned Rhinoceros, Crowned Crane
Crowned Crane
Crowned Crane may refer to:*Black Crowned Crane *Grey Crowned Crane *Red-crowned Crane or Japanese Crane...
and the Lion-tailed Macaque
Lion-tailed Macaque
The lion-tailed macaque is an Old World monkey that is endemic to the Western Ghats of South India.-Physical Characteristics:...
. Lack of breeding and exchange programs has led to the elimination of individuals and populations of environmentally vulnerable species like the Southern Cassowary
Southern Cassowary
The Southern Cassowary, Casuarius casuarius, also known as Double-wattled Cassowary, Australian Cassowary or Two-wattled Cassowary, is a large flightless black bird...
, wild Yak
Yak
The yak, Bos grunniens or Bos mutus, is a long-haired bovine found throughout the Himalayan region of south Central Asia, the Tibetan Plateau and as far north as Mongolia and Russia. In addition to a large domestic population, there is a small, vulnerable wild yak population...
, Giant Eland
Giant Eland
The giant eland is an open forest savannah antelope. It is found in Central African Republic, South Sudan, Cameroon and Senegal. There are two subspecies: the endangered T. d. derbianus, found in Senegal's Niokolo-Koba National Park, and the low risk T. d...
, Slow Loris
Slow loris
Slow lorises are a group of five species of strepsirrhine primates which make up the genus Nycticebus. Found in South and Southeast Asia, they range from Northeast India in the west to the Philippines in the east, and from the Yunnan province in China in the north to the island of Java in the south...
and Echidna
Echidna
Echidnas , also known as spiny anteaters, belong to the family Tachyglossidae in the monotreme order of egg-laying mammals. There are four extant species, which, together with the platypus, are the only surviving members of that order and are the only extant mammals that lay eggs...
.
The cramped, unsuitable and unhygienic conditions inside the cages, and in the zoo in general has been criticized for long. The death of a Great Indian One-horned Rhinoceros sparked off speculation about the veterinary efficiency at the zoo. ZooCheck Canada found conditions in the zoo unsatisfactory in 2004. The zoo director Subir Choudhury has gone on record in 2006 saying:
We are aware that the animals and birds are not well in the cages and moats. Efforts are on minimizing their agony.
The zoo has also been criticized for the quality of its animal - visitor interaction. Teasing of animals was a common occurrence at the zoo, though corrective measures are underway. On 1 January 1996 the tiger Shiva mauled two visitors as they tried to garland it, killing one, and earning him the runner-up for the Darwin Awards
Darwin Awards
The Darwin Awards are a tongue-in-cheek honor, created by Wendy Northcutt to recognize individuals who contribute to human evolution by self-selecting themselves out of the gene pool through putting themselves in life-threatening situations...
. Another mauling leading to a death occurred in 2000.
The zoo has also been criticized for its animal - keeper
Zookeeper
A zookeeper is a worker in a zoo, responsible for the feeding and daily care of the animals. As part of their routine, they clean the exhibits and report health problems...
relations. A chimpanzee attacked and severely injured its keeper in Alipore Zoo, and numerous other incidents have been reported including the case of an elephant trampling its mahout
Mahout
A mahout is a person who drives an elephant. The word mahout comes from the Hindi words mahaut and mahavat. Usually, a mahout starts as a boy in the 'family business' when he is assigned an elephant early in its life and they would be attached to each other throughout the elephant's life.The most...
to death in 1963 which had to be put down. In 2001, it was revealed that zoo staff drugged the Great Indian One-horned Rhinoceros into relieving itself more often than normal, which enabled them to collect the urine and sell it on the black market as an anti-impotence medicine.
Panthera hybrid program
The zoo attracted flak from the scientific community in general, because of cross breeding experiments between lionLion
The lion is one of the four big cats in the genus Panthera, and a member of the family Felidae. With some males exceeding 250 kg in weight, it is the second-largest living cat after the tiger...
s and tiger
Tiger
The tiger is the largest cat species, reaching a total body length of up to and weighing up to . Their most recognizable feature is a pattern of dark vertical stripes on reddish-orange fur with lighter underparts...
s to produce strains like tigon
Tigon
Tigon may refer to:*Tiglon, a hybrid between a tiger and a lioness*Tigon British Film Productions, a British film production and distribution company*Tigon Studios, a video game production company...
s, and litigons (see Panthera hybrid
Panthera hybrid
The four living species of Panthera genus may produce a number of hybrid crosses...
). The zoo bred two tigons in the 1970s — Rudrani (b. 1971) and Ranjini (b.1973) were bred from the cross between a Royal Bengal Tiger and an African Lion. Rudrani went on to produce 7 offsprings by mating with an Asiatic Lion
Asiatic Lion
The Asiatic lion also known as the Indian lion, Persian lion and Eurasian Lion is a subspecies of lion. The only place in the wild where the lion is found is in the Gir Forest of Gujarat, India...
, producing "litigon"s. One of these litigons, named Cubanacan survived to adulthood, stood over 5.5 feet (1.7 m) tall, measured over 11.5 feet (3.5 m) and weighed over 800 pounds. It died in 1991 at the age of 15. It was marketed by the zoo as the world's largest living big cat. All such hybrid males were sterile. Quite a few of these creatures suffered from genetic abnormalities and many died prematurely. Rangini, the last tigon in the zoo, died in 1999 as the oldest known tigon. The zoo has stopped breeding hybrids after the 1985 legislation passed by the Government of India
Government of India
The Government of India, officially known as the Union Government, and also known as the Central Government, was established by the Constitution of India, and is the governing authority of the union of 28 states and seven union territories, collectively called the Republic of India...
banning breeding of panthera hybrids after a vigorous campaign by the World Wide Fund for Nature
World Wide Fund for Nature
The World Wide Fund for Nature is an international non-governmental organization working on issues regarding the conservation, research and restoration of the environment, formerly named the World Wildlife Fund, which remains its official name in Canada and the United States...
(then World Wildlife Fund).
Attractions
Lakh
A lakh is a unit in the Indian numbering system equal to one hundred thousand . It is widely used both in official and other contexts in Pakistan, Bangladesh, India, Maldives, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Myanmar and is often used in Indian English.-Usage:...
(2,000,000) — more than any other tourist attraction in Kolkata, and a peak of over 25,000 on Christmas Day and New Year's Day
New Year's Day
New Year's Day is observed on January 1, the first day of the year on the modern Gregorian calendar as well as the Julian calendar used in ancient Rome...
.
The zoo displays a large number of crowd-pulling megafauna
Megafauna
In terrestrial zoology, megafauna are "giant", "very large" or "large" animals. The most common thresholds used are or...
, including the Royal Bengal Tiger, African Lion, Jaguar
Jaguar
The jaguar is a big cat, a feline in the Panthera genus, and is the only Panthera species found in the Americas. The jaguar is the third-largest feline after the tiger and the lion, and the largest in the Western Hemisphere. The jaguar's present range extends from Southern United States and Mexico...
, Hippopotamus
Hippopotamus
The hippopotamus , or hippo, from the ancient Greek for "river horse" , is a large, mostly herbivorous mammal in sub-Saharan Africa, and one of only two extant species in the family Hippopotamidae After the elephant and rhinoceros, the hippopotamus is the third largest land mammal and the heaviest...
, Great Indian One-horned Rhinoceros, Reticulated Giraffe, Grant's Zebra
Grant's Zebra
The Grant's Zebra is the smallest of six subspecies of the Plains Zebra.-Distribution:The distribution of this subspecies is in Zambia west of the Luangwa river and west to Kariba, Shaba Province of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, north to the Kibanzao Plateau. In Tanzania north from...
, Emu
Emu
The Emu Dromaius novaehollandiae) is the largest bird native to Australia and the only extant member of the genus Dromaius. It is the second-largest extant bird in the world by height, after its ratite relative, the ostrich. There are three subspecies of Emus in Australia...
, Dromedary Camel and Indian Elephant
Indian Elephant
The Indian Elephant is one of three recognized subspecies of the Asian elephant, and native to mainland Asia. Since 1986, Elephas maximus has been listed as endangered by IUCN as the population has declined by at least 50% over the last three generations, estimated to be 60–75 years...
. Previously, other megafauna like the Panthera hybrids and the Giant Eland
Giant Eland
The giant eland is an open forest savannah antelope. It is found in Central African Republic, South Sudan, Cameroon and Senegal. There are two subspecies: the endangered T. d. derbianus, found in Senegal's Niokolo-Koba National Park, and the low risk T. d...
were present.
The zoo sported a large collection of attractive birds, including some threatened species up until the 1980s - large parrots including a number of Macaw
Macaw
Macaws are small to large, often colourful New World parrots. Of the many different Psittacidae genera, six are classified as macaws: Ara, Anodorhynchus, Cyanopsitta, Primolius, Orthopsittaca, and Diopsittaca...
species, Conure
Conure
Conures are a diverse, loosely-defined group of small to medium-sized parrots. They belong to several genera within a long-tailed group of the New World Parrot subfamily Arinae. The term "conure" is used primarily in bird keeping, though it has appeared in some scientific journals...
s, lories and lorikeets; other large birds like Touracos and Hornbill
Hornbill
Hornbills are a family of bird found in tropical and subtropical Africa, Asia and Melanesia. They are characterized by a long, down-curved bill which is frequently brightly-colored and sometimes has a casque on the upper mandible. Both the common English and the scientific name of the family...
s; colourful game birds like the Golden Pheasant
Golden Pheasant
The Golden Pheasant or "Chinese Pheasant", is a gamebird of the order Galliformes and the family Phasianidae...
, Lady Amherst's Pheasant
Lady Amherst's Pheasant
The Lady Amherst's Pheasant, Chrysolophus amherstiae, is a bird of the order Galliformes and the family Phasianidae.These are native to south western China and Myanmar, but have been introduced elsewhere, and have established a self-supporting, but now declining, feral population in England, the...
and Swinhoe's Pheasant
Swinhoe's Pheasant
Swinhoe's Pheasant, Lophura swinhoii, is a bird of the pheasant subfamily of Phasianidae family that is endemic to Taiwan, where it inhabits primary broadleaved forest and mature secondary forest at 200-2,300 m. It was sometimes referred to as the unofficial "national bird" of Taiwan, but the...
and some large flightless birds like the Emu
Emu
The Emu Dromaius novaehollandiae) is the largest bird native to Australia and the only extant member of the genus Dromaius. It is the second-largest extant bird in the world by height, after its ratite relative, the ostrich. There are three subspecies of Emus in Australia...
, Cassowary
Cassowary
The cassowaries are ratites, very large flightless birds in the genus Casuarius native to the tropical forests of New Guinea, nearby islands and northeastern Australia. There are three extant species recognized today...
and Ostrich
Ostrich
The Ostrich is one or two species of large flightless birds native to Africa, the only living member of the genus Struthio. Some analyses indicate that the Somali Ostrich may be better considered a full species apart from the Common Ostrich, but most taxonomists consider it to be a...
. However, lack of pairing and exchange programs have caused a significant decline in the populations, causing some of the populations to die out.
Layout
Laid out on 45 acres (18.2 ha) of land, the Calcutta zoo has been unable to expand or modify its layout for over 50 years, and thus has a rather backdated plan. It contains a Reptile House (a new one has been built), a Primate House, an Elephant House, and a Panther House which opens out onto the open air enclosures for the lions and tigers. A separate Children's zoo is present, and the central water bodies inside the zoo grounds attracts migratory birds.The Calcutta Aquarium lies across the street from the zoo, and is affiliated to the zoo.
Adwaita
The most famous specimen in the zoo was probably the Aldabra Giant TortoiseAldabra Giant Tortoise
The Aldabra giant tortoise , from the islands of the Aldabra Atoll in the Seychelles, is one of the largest tortoises in the world....
"Adwaita
Adwaita
Adwaita was the name of a male Aldabra giant tortoise in the Alipore Zoological Gardens of Kolkata, India...
", gifted to the zoo in 1875 (brought by British seafarers to Lord Clive's menagerie from Seychelles
Seychelles
Seychelles , officially the Republic of Seychelles , is an island country spanning an archipelago of 115 islands in the Indian Ocean, some east of mainland Africa, northeast of the island of Madagascar....
), and reputedly over 250 years old when it died in 2006 — a contender for the longest lived animal.
Breeding programs
The zoo was among the first zoos in the world to breed white tigerWhite tiger
The white tiger is a recessive mutant of the Bengal tiger, which was reported in the wild from time to time in Assam, Bengal, Bihar and especially from the former State of Rewa.-Color comparison:...
s and the common Reticulated Giraffe. While it has successfully bred some megafauna, its rate of breeding rare species has not been very successful, often due to lack of initiative and funding. One notable exception is the breeding programme of the Manipur Brow-antlered Deer, or Thamin which has been brought back from the brink of extinction
Extinction
In biology and ecology, extinction is the end of an organism or of a group of organisms , normally a species. The moment of extinction is generally considered to be the death of the last individual of the species, although the capacity to breed and recover may have been lost before this point...
by the breeding program at the Alipore Zoo.
Reforms
The zoo is presently downsizing to meet animal comfort requirements laid down by the Central Zoo Authority of IndiaCentral Zoo Authority of India
The Central Zoo Authority of India is the body of the government of India responsible for oversight of zoos. It is an affiliate member of the World Association of Zoos and Aquariums ....
(CZAI). It has also increased the number of open air enclosures. A move to a suburban location was also contemplated, but was not undertaken based on the recommendations of the CZAI, which claimed the Alipore site was of historical significance. The CZAI also cleared the zoo of malpractices in an evaluation performed in late 2005, even though the zoo has continued to attract bad press.
Ecological significance of the zoo grounds
The zoo is also on the flywayFlyway
A flyway is a flight path used in bird migration. Flyways generally span over continents and often oceans.-Flyways of the Americas:*Atlantic Flyway*Central Flyway*Mississippi Flyway*Pacific Flyway*Allegheny Front...
for several migratory birds like the Sarus Crane
Sarus Crane
The Sarus Crane is a large non-migratory crane found in parts of the Indian Subcontinent, Southeast Asia and Australia. The tallest of the flying birds, standing at a height of up to 1.8 m , they are conspicuous and iconic species of open wetlands...
, and sports a sizable wetland inside the zoo grounds. Since the zoo is enveloped by urban settlements for miles, the zoo wetlands are the only resting spot for some of the birds and are a focus of conservationists in Kolkata. However, the number of migratory bird visiting the zoo dropped from documented highs by over 40% in the winter of 2004–2005. Experts attribute the causes of the decline to increased pollution, new construction of highrises in the area, increasing threats in the summer grounds of the birds and declining quality of the water bodies at the zoo.