Wednesday, May 11, 2005
Wednesday, May 11, 2005 |
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Thiruvananthapuram
G. Mahadevan
THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: The death of a newborn Sambhar deer with `Hydrocephalus' at the city zoo on Tuesday morning has yet again focussed attention on the dangers of in-breeding and the lack of adequate space for housing certain species of animals.
Genetic disorder
Hydrocephalus - an abnormally swollen head - can be the result of genetic disorders arising from generations of in-breeding the zoo, the vet, Jayakumar, said today. Such disorders become evident after the third or fourth generation of in-bred species; almost all the deer at the zoo belong to this category, he said. With a view to controlling the exploding deer population - 110 spotted deer and 75 sambhars as of today - the zoo has recently finished sterilising all the male deer of these two species. However no sterilisation has been done on either the Black Bucks or the Hog deer numbering 27 and 25 respectively. The zoo's problem with numbers extends to the hippos, tigers and spectacled caimans too. With just one display enclosure, the zoo is struggling to house all its six hippos properly. As zoo officials are yet to figure out a way to sterilise the four male hippos as separating males and females is frowned upon by the Central Zoo Authority. With no more extra space available at the zoo, the question of building an additional enclosure with a water body to boot seems out of the question. As tigers are loners, the zoo cannot put all the eight cats it has together at the tiger enclosure. The zoo is yet to decide on sterilising the four males who are now being kept separate from the females. The plight of the spectacled caiman (a variety of crocodile) is even worse; 18 of them are crowded into a small enclosure. As sterilisation is not possible in this case, controlling numbers would mean destroying the caiman's eggs as soon as they are laid.
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