Keeping animals cool a big challenge

Absence of monsoon rains and the rising temperature has posed a big challenge to the zoo officials in maintaining good health of inmates with limited resources. The zoo has neither adequate funds nor rostering-free power supply to provide adequate amenities required in summer to the animals.

Absence of monsoon rains and the rising temperature has posed a big challenge to the zoo officials in maintaining good health of inmates with limited resources. The zoo has neither adequate funds nor rostering-free power supply to provide adequate amenities required in summer to the animals. However, the officials’ committed efforts to keep the animals healthy have been paying good dividends.
“Despite intolerable heat and scarcity of water, the animals in the zoo have not shown any sign of ill-health. Almost all of them are hale and hearty” said director of the zoo R Hemant Kumar.

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Kumar told Hindustan Times that the first sign of ill-health was less intake of food by any of the animals. As long as the animals consumed normal quantity of meals, they were deemed fit. Regular medical check up helped to ensure about their good health he added.

He said that extremity of weather conditions often hit the birds and hence special precautions were taken to protect them against the vagaries of the weather conditions.

The aviary covered with wet Khas-curtains kept the atmosphere cool for the birds and they remained happy within the artificially created cool surrounding.

Since lions were the inhabitants of desert forest, they seldom got affected either by the extreme heat or the extreme cold weather. They were habitual of living in open “Sabanah “ type of grass land which has very few of shady tress, that too at a gap of one kilometre or more.

Lions also did not prefer to lie in water pools to keep cool. They survived amidst the most uncongenial natural conditions. As such the excessive heat of the summer sun did not affect them in any manner, he said. The two lions at the zoo were in quite comfortable situation amidst the grassy enclosure, he said.On the other hand, tigers and leopard, that are the inhabitants of forests with thick trees, took refuge in water ponds for fighting heat.

Consequently, for seven leopards and two tigers in the zoo wet moats were created in their respective enclosures. The only difficulty faced in changing the water of the moat each day was because of uncertain and long hours of power roistering, he said.

Rhino was another big animal which needed to keep cool during summer by taking mud-bath that also provided it protection against the summer mosquitoes, he added .