20-day-old rhino calf dies after being ‘abandoned’ by mother
Twenty-day-old Tarzan is dead.
Forest guards found the male rhino calf moving about helplessly in Pobitora Wildlife Sanctuary, about 48 km east of Guwahati, a week ago. The calf had apparently been abandoned by its mother.
The 39sqkm Pobitora, which has the highest concentration of the Indian rhino (Rhinoceros unicornis), is often called ‘Kaziranga’s showroom’. Officials said the calf, which was starving, was lucky to not have been a prey to carnivores, including feral dogs. They named it Tarzan and began feeding him.
But Tarzan needed treatment. He was thus sent to the animal care centre at the Assam State Zoo in Guwahati.
“Our best was not good enough to save the calf, which died at 3am on Thursday. An autopsy confirmed it died of internal bleeding because of gastro complications induced by days of starvation after birth,” the zoo’s divisional forest officer Tejas Mariswamy told HT.
The calf, he said, was barely 20 days old as was evident from the pinkish tinge of his skin. “He either got separated from his mother or she abandoned him.”
Wildlife experts said some female rhinos in the wild tend to abandon their calves.
“This is true of young, firsttime mothers that probably do not care much about motherhood,” said Rathin Barman of the Centre for Wildlife Rehabilitation and Conservation (CWRC) at Kaziranga.