Tags
black tiger, melanistic, Nandankanan Zoo, Odisha, pictures, tiger, travel photos, travels, traveltales
I saw a melanistic or black tiger (black-stripes close together on its torso) at the Nandankanan Zoological Park in Bhubaneswar on my recent trip. Only three of the zoos in India have similar melanistic big cats at present and all have links to the ones from Nandankanan Park where the first one was born in the year 2014.
When Sneha, the tigress at Nandankanan Zoological park gave birth to four cubs, two of them turned out to be ‘normal’ like their parents, but the remaining two were melanistic. In 2015, these melanistic big cats were put in zoo enclosures for the viewing pleasure of visitors.
A melanistic tiger is the result of random variations in the gene types in the population of tigers and are uncommon. The Simlipal Tiger Reserve, about two hundred kilometres from the Nandankanan Park, holds the distinction of being the only place where you can find melanistic tigers in the wild. The black tigers of Nandankanan Park trace their ancestry to those in this tiger reserve.
The first part of my zoo visit was spent seeing snakes, monitor lizards (*shudder*), crocodiles and also a couple of emus and ostriches, not to mention nilgais (largest Asian antelopes indigenous to the Indian subcontinent), spotted deer and the like before we finally descended on the black tiger enclosure. There before our eyes stood this magnificent specimen of a big cat pacing up and down on the opposite end of the enclosure, not deigning to come any closer.
Here are some pictures:
Like every tourist place, the guide had tales to tell us. One of them was about a romantic tigress so in love with a male tiger of the zoo that she jumped over the high walls into the zoo to be with him and refused to leave for the forest. Likely story, eh? It sounds too much like a Bollywood movie story written by men about the women of their dreams who purportedly give up everything to go and live happily-ever-after in a ‘cage’ for the sake of love. Interestingly, this story about the big cat has no time frame as such and each time it is told, it is about the tiger you are seeing at that moment in time.
A word about the other tigers in the premises:
One of the Bengal tigers was more forthcoming than its black counterpart and walked to and fro right under our noses, on the other side of the fencing of course. Another sat facing away from us, totally focussed on something outside our Ken. The white tigers couldn’t be bothered and slept with their backs to us in the cool shade of a tree, only partially visible to the visitors. (For the videos, please visit shailzen on Instagram.)
Shail's Nest 
I am fully aware that the only chance we have of seeing some animals is to visit a zoo – and I have done so many times. Somehow, the thought of the tigers walking back and forth, back and forth in their cages is very sad. Your description and photographs (which I am pleased to see!) brings to mind this poem by Ted Hughes:
The apes yawn and adore their fleas in the sun.
The parrots shriek as if they were on fire, or strut
Like cheap tarts to attract the stroller with the nut.
Fatigued with indolence, tiger and lion
Lie still as the sun. The boa-constrictor’s coil
Is a fossil. Cage after cage seems empty, or
Stinks of sleepers from the breathing straw.
It might be painted on a nursery wall.
But who runs like the rest past these arrives
At a cage where the crowd stands, stares, mesmerized,
As a child at a dream, at a dream, at a jaguar hurrying enraged
Through prison darkness after the drills of his eyes
On a short fierce fuse. Not in boredom —
The eye satisfied to be blind in fire,
By the bang of blood in the brain deaf the ear —
He spins from the bars, but there’s no cage to him
More than to the visionary his cell:
His stride is wildernesses of freedom:
The world rolls under the long thrust of his heel,
Over the cage floor the horizons come.
I absolutely agree with you, Anne. No one should be in cages. The ones here are in open enclosures. Not like in the wild, but slightly better than the cages in some other zoos.
Thank you for sharing the poem. It paints such an accurate picture!
Wonderful creatures but, although I know some zoos cater for animals that have been rescued and can’t survive in the wild, I do hate seeing creatures stuck in cages. I know some zoos do good work, but most do not, I think!
The animals here are not in cages, but open spaces with trees and grass, with fencing. That’s something I guess 🙂