BENGALURU: Is Sundar mingling with others? You wouldn’t expect people to come out with requests of video clips of animals. But that is what they are doing now. Sundar, an elephant, was rescued from Kolhapur five years ago. Now, people want to know if he is mingling with other cow elephants. The zoos are naturally delighted with this kind of response from people.
To keep people’s mind off the depressing 24/7 coronavirus news and ensure they are connected with animals, Bengaluru’s Bannerghatta Biological Park (BBP) and Mysuru Zoo have taken the lead in making short videos of animals, birds and reptiles housed in the zoos and posting them on social media. The videos have got a lot of eyeballs and appreciation.
The Twitter and Facebook handles of both the zoos are flooded with videos. It also seems like a mini, yet healthy, competition between the two zoos to get a large number of virtual visitors. A video of three rhinos, Virat (9), Bobbli (7) and Gowrie(4) shot at Mysuru Zoo, along with their zoo keeper has caught the attention of people on social media.
The video first starts with Virat being aggressive with his females and later when they are separated, it’s seen that the females turn Virat aggressively away, a rare sight seen by the staffers and citizens. Comments poured in. One said it was nice to see a male being chased.B P Ravi, Zoo Authority of Karnataka, Member Secretary, told The New Indian Express that creating videos was the idea of BBP Executive Director Vanashri Vipin Singh. It was decided to make videos and post them on social media, only to engage and interact with the visitors.
‘Videos gained popularity during lockdown’
“Little did we know that they will become a hit. People appreciate the videos, post comments, and even demand more videos of a particular species. Videos used to be done before too, but now they have become very popular after the lockdown, especially among children,” Ravi said. He added that animal behaviour is normally not observed by people when they visit the zoo, they go with the flow and only see the animals. Through the videos, they are informed of the behaviour of animals, their types, other details about them.
It is also interesting for the staffers to see a change in the behaviour of animals, especially after the lockdown, since there are no crowds. The videos are shot by zoo executive directors, naturalists, educationists, veterinarians and some times by staffers also.
Vanashri said visitors have asked for videos on safari tigers and other elephants, giraffes (especially with there being two now), peacocks and Hanuman Langurs. The idea of making the videos is to educate people, have an outreach. Now, a quiz will also be conducted to keep children more engaged.
Zoos sustain only when there are visitors, now with the lockdown, there is nothing happening there. The way animals are relaxing and mingling with their keepers is in itself a rare sight. Normally during the summer vacation months of March-May, at least 6 lakh people would visit BBBP zoo and around 11 lakh people Mysuru Zoo.