The Zoological Garden, Alipore (also informally called the Alipore Zoo or Kolkata Zoo) is India's oldest formally stated
brow-antlered deer
. One of the most popular tourist attractions in Kolkata, it draws huge crowds during the winter season, especially during December and January. The highest attendance till date was on January 1, 2018 with 110,000 visitors.
History
To those who can remember the dirty and rather dismal looking approach to Belvedere, the improved and satisfactory condition of the neighbourhood, at present, must afford a very striking contrast. Both east and west of the roadway leading from the Zeerut bridge were untidy, crowded unsavoury bustees. Today we shall find on the site of the old bustees the Calcutta 'Zoo.' A very large share of the credit for the establishment of this pleasant resort is due to Sir Richard Temple, who was Lieutenant Governor of Bengal from 1874 to 1877, but long before the scheme assumed any proper shape, Dr. Fayrer, C.S.I., in 1867 and again in 1873 Mr. L. Schwendler (known as the 'Father of the Zoo') had brought forward and strongly urged the necessity of a Zoological Garden…The visit to Calcutta of His Majesty King Edward the Seventh, then Prince of Wales, was seized upon as an auspicious occasion. On 1 January 1876, the gardens were inaugurated by His Royal Highness, and in May of the same year they were opened to the public.[3]
Cotton, H.E.A (1909)
The zoo had its roots in a private menagerie established by
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.[4] The menagerie was photographed by John Edward Saché in 1860s. [7]
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 History's July 1841 issue. In 1873, the Lieutenant-Governor
Asiatic Society
and Agri-Horticultural Society.
The zoo was formally opened in
hog deer
.
It is not clear whether the Aldabra giant tortoiseAdwaita 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.[8]
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 MysoreKrishna Raja Wadiyar IV.[9]
The park was initially run by an honorary managing committee which included Schwendler and the famous botanist
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.[11][12] The zoo had an unusually high scientific standard for its time, and the record of the parasite genus Cladotaenia (Cohn, 1901) is based upon cestodes (flatworms) found in an Australian bird that died at the zoo.[13]
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 also, in the past, attracted a lot of criticism for keeping single and unpaired specimens of rare species like the
The previously cramped, unsuitable and unhygienic conditions inside the cages, and in the zoo in general had been criticized for long. The death of a great Indian one-horned rhinoceros sparked off speculation about the veterinary efficiency at the zoo.[16]ZooCheck Canada found conditions in the zoo unsatisfactory in 2004.[17] 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.[17]
The zoo had also been criticized for the quality of its animal/visitor interaction. Teasing of animals was a common occurrence at the zoo,[18] though corrective measures are now in place. On 1 January 1996 the tiger Shiva mauled two visitors as they tried to garland it, killing one,[19][20][21] Shiva was later shot and killed by the Indian Army. 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 was subsequently put down.[22] 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.[23]
Panthera hybrid program
The zoo attracted flak from the scientific community in general, because of cross breeding experiments between lions and tigers to produce strains like
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 (360 kg). 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.[24] 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