Thrissur Zoo is a 13.5 acres (5.5 ha) zoo that opened in 1885 in the heart of Thrissur

Thrissur

This article is about the city in India. For the district, see Thrissur district. For the urban agglomeration area of Thrissur see Thrissur Metropolitan Area...

 city, Kerala

Kerala

or Keralam is an Indian state located on the Malabar coast of south-west India. It was created on 1 November 1956 by the States Reorganisation Act by combining various Malayalam speaking regions....

, India

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...

. It is one of the oldest zoos in the country, and is home to the wide variety of animals, reptiles, and birds. The zoo compound includes a natural history museum and an art museum that showcase the socio-cultural heritage of the region.

The Thrissur Zoo is 2 kilometres (1.2 mi) from the Thrissur city center and is open from 10:00 AM till 6:30 PM, except Mondays. Still and video cameras are allowed in the park for a fee.

Exhibits

The zoo includes a Zoological Garden, Botanical Garden, Art Museum, and Natural History Museum in its compound.

Animals

Wildlife at the Thrissur zoo includes 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, lion

Lion

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, deer

Deer

Deer are the ruminant mammals forming the family Cervidae. Species in the Cervidae family include white-tailed deer, elk, moose, red deer, reindeer, fallow deer, roe deer and chital. Male deer of all species and female reindeer grow and shed new antlers each year...

s, sloth bear

Sloth Bear

The sloth bear , also known as the labiated bear, is a nocturnal insectivorous species of bear found wild within the Indian subcontinent. The sloth bear evolved from ancestral brown bears during the Pleistocene and shares features found in insect-eating mammals through convergent evolution...

s, monkey

Monkey

A monkey is a primate, either an Old World monkey or a New World monkey. There are about 260 known living species of monkey. Many are arboreal, although there are species that live primarily on the ground, such as baboons. Monkeys are generally considered to be intelligent. Unlike apes, monkeys...

s, 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...

, camel

Camel

A camel is an even-toed ungulate within the genus Camelus, bearing distinctive fatty deposits known as humps on its back. There are two species of camels: the dromedary or Arabian camel has a single hump, and the bactrian has two humps. Dromedaries are native to the dry desert areas of West Asia,...

s, cobra

Cobra

Cobra is a venomous snake belonging to the family Elapidae. However, not all snakes commonly referred to as cobras are of the same genus, or even of the same family. The name is short for cobra capo or capa Snake, which is Portuguese for "snake with hood", or "hood-snake"...

s, krait

Bungarus

Bungarus, commonly referred to as kraits , is a genus of venomous elapid snakes found in South and South-East Asia. There are 12 species and 5 subspecies recognized.- Distribution :...

s, vipers, rat snake

Rat snake

Rat snakes are medium to large constrictors that can be found through a great portion of the northern hemisphere. They feed primarily on rodents and birds and, with some species exceeding 3 m , they can occupy top levels of some food chains. Many species make attractive and docile pets and one,...

s, pink flamingo

Flamingo

Flamingos or flamingoes are gregarious wading birds in the genus Phoenicopterus , the only genus in the family Phoenicopteridae...

s, mithun

Gayal

Gayal or mithun is the domestic gaur, probably a gaur-cattle hybrid breed.-Taxonomy:In his first description of 1804, Aylmer Bourke Lambert applied the binomial Bos frontalis to a domestic specimen probably from Chittagong....

 of the north-eastern hills, and 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:...

s. There is also a special building which houses snakes.

The future

A new home for the zoo is being constructed in nearby Puthur

Puthur, Thrissur

Puthur, Thrissur is a village in the taluk of Thrissur in the Thrissur district of Kerala, India. It is the future home of the Thrissur Zoo....

, and will expand the size of the zoo from its current 13.5 acres (5.5 ha) to 306 acres (123.8 ha). The new zoo will be close to the Peechi Dam, Kerala Forest Research Institute

Kerala Forest Research Institute

The Kerala Forest Research Institute is an research organisation based in Peechi, in Thrissur, India. The Institution was established in 1975 by the Government of Kerala as part of its Science and Technology Department, and in 2003 became part of the Kerala State Council for Science, Technology...

, Kerala Agricultural University

Kerala Agricultural University

Kerala Agricultural University is the primary and the principal instrumentality of the Kerala state in providing human resources, and skills and technology, required for the sustainable development of its agriculture, defined broadly encompassing all production activities based on land and water,...

College of Forestry, and College of Veterinary and Animal Sciences.

External links

• Official website of: "Central Zoo Authority of India" (CZA), Government of India