Day 76/100 of Cool Indian Wildlife History In 1970, T. Venkateswarlu saw a gharial caught by a fisherman in Patna who told him he had caught three more two years ago at the same spot on Ganga. They used to migrate from Gandak river, all the way to Allahabad through Ganga back then.

Day 75/100 of Cool Indian Wildlife History Clara was a famous rhinoceros captured from Assam, taken to Holland, and exhibited across Europe in 1741-58. In India, Director of the Dutch factoy, kept her as a pet in Hooghly for 3 yrs. This 1747 illustration shows a ship taking her from Hooghly.

Day 74/100 of Cool Indian Wildlife History C. Howson of the Mayo College, Ajmer in 1938 wrote about families of otters killing crocodiles in the Pushkar Lake. He goes on to say that when he shared this with students, one of them shared a similar incident from Bundi.

Day 73/100 of Cool Indian Wildlife History Reginald Heber, second Bishop of Calcutta, came to what is now a locality of Kolkata, Chitpur, on 1 March, 1824. Here, he saw a jackal. He also mentions Baboo Budinâth Roy, who lived there had a “menagerie . . . only inferior to that of Barrackpoor.”

Day 72/100 of Cool Indian Wildlife History This note on an alleged blackbuck-chinkara shot in Bikaner was published in 1925. Though it is hard to say for certain what the animal was with such scarce details, the text and the accompanying photograph make it a rather curious record.

Day 71/100 of Cool Indian Wildlife History Similipal's pseudomelanistic tigers are famous for their larger than usual black stripes today. But what's not generally known is this old record of a completely black tiger shot in Chittagong in 1846. It is the only known record of its kind.

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Day 70/100 of Cool Indian Wildlife History This postcard was made by the Gobindram & Oodeyram studio in 1908. Based in Jaipur, they specialized in photos related to the city. The tiger is in a captive setting, and given the studio, it is highly likely it was originally from the jungles of Jaipur.

Day 69/100 of Cool Indian Wildlife History Van Ingen and Van Ingen was a famous taxidermy firm in British India that served a large number of hunters and naturalists across the country. In 1941, they published two photos of unusual morphs in two tigers and a leopard with a note on their origins.

Day 68/100 of Cool Indian Wildlife History A lot of British hunters and tribal peoples in India believed in large packs of dholes killing tigers but its written accounts have questionable reliability. This is its only known visual depiction. Tiger Hunted by Wild Dogs, Samuel Howitt (1807)

Day 66/100 of Cool Indian Wildlife History Sumatran rhinos were generally considered to have gone extinct in India by mid-20th century. In 1996, Dr. Anwaruddin Choudhury went for research in the far-northeast of India along the border with Myanmar and discovered local reports from the region.

Day 64/100 of Cool Indian Wildlife History This is a table from a report made by J. C. Haughton, Commissioner of Cooch Behar, in 1879, showing the animals bounty-hunted in the region from 1867, to 1869.

Day 63/100 of Cool Indian Wildlife History Captain A. Kinloch spent 15 yrs in 19th c. India and wrote a book on the wildlife found here. He mentions a soldier during the Revolt of 1857 who shot a captive rhino to test the idea that their skin is impenetrable. The animal died and he was punished.

Day 62/100 of Cool Indian Wildlife History In 1882, C. E. M. Russell, a young hunter then, was out for gaur in the forests of Berambadi at the edge of current Bandipur National Park, when he saw five cheetahs, one of which he shot dead. One of the southernmost records of an Indian cheetah.

Day 61 of Cool Indian Wildlife History Maharawal Lakshman Singh of Dungarpur had an interest in nature. These nos. show the decline of some species in his erstwhile kingdom. Obviously not upto modern scientific standards, but they depict the general devastation Indian wildlife faced at the time.

Day 60/100 of Cool Indian Wildlife History This is a detail of the carvings at the Konark Sun Temple, Odisha showing a group of people presenting a giraffe to a king seated on an elephant from the 13th cen. This coastal region had massive maritime trade so it's likely showing a real trade scene.

Day 59/100 of Cool Indian Wildlife History Today, dholes are extinct in the state of Rajasthan but we find them in many places in the old records. For ex, this is a list of some popularly known species found in the famous Ranthambore Tiger Reserve from 1981. It includes the dhole.

Day 58/100 of Cool Indian Wildlife History These two undated sequential stereographs show hundreds of wild boar being fed at Khas Odi, Udaipur, a large arena where they were fed daily and frequently staged fights were held. Notice the two shikaris on the cage, trying to attract one of them.

Day 57/100 of Cool Indian Wildlife History Today, elephants are largely extinct in central India. Been so for a few centuries. These two paintings from the 1590s show the third Mughal Emperor, Akbar, seeing a fight with wild elephants and inspecting the captured animals. Both at Shivpuri.

Day 56/100 of Cool Indian Wildlife History James Tod, famous for writing about the history and contemporary times of the region, was an official of EEIC who worked in the Rajputana of early 19th century. At one place, he writes: “ . . . lions are by no means unknown in Bikaner.”

Day 55/100 of Cool Indian Wildlife History Lions had gone extinct everywhere except Gir by the 1890s and the culture of writing books on hunting in India began in the late 19th c. among the British—so, their earlier history is based on more obscure sources. Here's a record, for example.

Day 54/100 of Cool Indian Wildlife History According to John Anderson (1879) Ganga river dolphin used to have a wide range across Ganga and Brahmaputra (and the connecting rivers). They could be easily seen in Yamuna and Hooghly, even in the cities of Delhi and Kolkata. Unimaginable today.

Day 53/100 of Cool Indian Wildlife History Subedar Sita Ram, an Indian Officer of the Bengal Army, in his memoir, writes that there were “tigers in abundance in the jungles around Agra, near Bharatpore, and on the road to Mutthura.” but they went extinct with the clearing of forests.

Day 52/100 of Cool Indian Wildlife History This painting, dated to 1820, was painted by a follower of Sita Ram, a famous painter of the Company School. It shows a llama and a pair of what look like a pair of western hoolock gibbons at the Barrackpore menagerie.

Day 51/100 of Cool Indian Wildlife History Louis Rousselet was a French traveller who spent four years in India in the mid-1860s. In his memoir, he writes that he witnessed a staged fight between a leopard and a wild boar in Mewar, which the wild boar won.

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Day 50/100 of Cool Indian Wildlife History In 1925 a ship at Mangalore reported, a “tiger” had severely injured two in the crew. Later, they found and shot a leopard that had gotten into the ship when it was loaded with salt south of Bombay and had stayed hidden for five days while out at sea.

Day 49/100 of Cool Indian Wildlife History This is a painting of a rhinoceros from the menagerie of Peshwa Madhavrao II at Poona in 1790. Two years later, David Price saw it and eventually went on to describe it as “the finest and most perfect model of a rhinoceros, that I have ever seen,”

Day 48/100 of Cool Indian Wildlife History Thomas Bowrey, an English traveller who reached Patna in 1670, records that rhinos were found around the city and that many calves were captured and tamed. His manuscript has an illustration too though we can't be sure if he actually saw one.

Day 47/100 of Cool Indian Wildlife History Major A. H. Mosse visited the erstwhile Princely State of Dhrangadhra in 1922. Here, he saw a hybrid born to a female Indian wild ass and a male domestic horse. These are the photos of the individual and its mother, and the relevant excerpt.

Day 46/100 of Cool Indian Wildlife History Range Forest Officer Ashok Singh in 1974 was working in Mirzapur when labourers told him, they'd seen a cat with two kittens eating a hare. He reached the spot to find only the kittens which they captured. The only photo of a caracal in Uttar Pradesh.

Day 45/100 of Cool Indian Wildlife History Historically, in India, there've been three types of animals captured for hunting. Cheetah, caracal and the raptors like falcons and hawks. They were widely used across the country. This photo from a book published in 1923 shows all three with hunters.

Day 44/100 of Cool Indian Wildlife History Javan rhinos of Sundarbans had become extremely rare by the end of the 19th c. This is a newspaper excerpt from 1902 about an animal near Diamond Harbour. It says it was so rare that people didn't even recognise it, reporting that a monster was seen.

Day 43/100 of Cool Indian Wildlife History After the East India Company annexed Awadh in Feb, 1856 the animals in the menagerie of Nawab Wajid Ali Shah were auctioned. A large event where many people bought a great number of animals. Among them, Edward Blyth. Here are the animals he bought there.

Day 42/100 of Cool Indian Wildlife History R. S. Dharmakumarsinhji, an ornithologist, conducted a landmark study on the lesser floricans of Bhavnagar in 1943-49, ringing 489 birds. It's important because today, it's a rare bird in the region and the global population estimates are about 300-600.

Day 41/100 of Cool Indian Wildlife History Marmaduke Burrough, American Consul at Calcutta, had tried to buy the first rhino brought to the US but it was sold to another buyer. He eventually got this and brought the second rhino in the US. This is an illustration of the animal and the keeper.

Day 40/100 of Cool Indian Wildlife History This painting of the Nawab of Awadh hunting was commissioned by a French Resident at Faizabad Jean-Baptiste-Joseph Gentil in 1774. Gentil himself was present at the hunts in 1768 and 1769. Notice the scale of the royal hunt and the abundance of wildlife.

Day 39 of Cool Indian Wildlife History In 1789, in the wilds of Kotdwara, Thomas Daniell and William Daniell came across a rhino. We have some illustrations and some notes on this sighting. The location is near the current Corbett Tiger Reserve. Among the northernmost records of an Indian rhino.

Day 38/100 of Cool Indian Wildlife History This illustration and excerpt of Tso Lhamo Lake, North Sikkim are from an 1854 book. While it focuses on the landscape and the wild asses, we see Tibetan antelope on the left too, which are today extinct in all of southern Tibet and beyond.

Day 37/100 of Cool Indian Wildlife History This is a record of a blue whale that washed up at the shore in Dabhol, Maharashtra in 1914. Hundreds of villagers came to see it, it was even called “Massa Dev”, meaning Fish God. S. H. Prater here gives a firsthand description and also its dimensions.

Day 36/100 of Cool Indian Wildlife History In 1884, William Rice listed common prey species of Asiatic lions. Inclusion wild asses of Kutch here shows lions' range within Saurashtra was larger then. Later, they went extinct in northern and central part of the peninsula, surviving in Gir alone.

Day 35/100 of Cool Indian Wildlife History This is a 19th c. painting from the Bundi School. Its dodo was a mystery for a long time. But new research shows almost all these are foreign animals (polar bear, American alligator, toucan etc) copied from earlier European zoology books.

Day 34/100 of Cool Indian Wildlife History This painting of a dodo by Ustad Mansur dates to the 1620s. Jahangir the fourth Mughal Emperor, his patron, was interested in nature, so people often brought him exotic creatures and hence, it's made with a live reference, making it anatomically accurate.

Day 33/100 of Cool Indian Wildlife History These are alleged dhole-jackal hybrids born in Mysore Zoo in 1931. A note, with a photograph, was published about the experiment that year. Two years later, another author, writing about the zoo's animals, gives a brief description of the pups.

Day 32/100 of Cool Indian Wildlife History This is an old mural from the aptly named Shikarburj at Bundi fort showing tigers and a pic of the place now. This place was used to hunt animals that'd come to drink water. It is also a record of the tigers that are locally extinct here today.

Day 31/100 of Cool Indian Wildlife History South Indian forests have been a source of captive elephants for millennia. Large habitat with abundant herds made them perfect. And hence, infrequently, we have recorded some unique specimens here. Like this albino male captured in Travancore in 1945.

Day 30/100 of Cool Indian Wildlife History This is a painting of a cassowary from 17th c. An inscription on it tells us the individual was brought from the port of Surat for sixty rupees and that its eggs were used to make huqqah bases. The Hindi name for the bird is “Kharasmurg.”

Day 29/100 of Cool Indian Wildlife History Lt. Heyland was the man who shot the last lions of Marwar in 1872. This is a record from the next year, but it doesn't specify when or where the incident happened. It says he once killed “11 tigers, 2 lions, several cheetas, bears, and wild jungle boars,”

Day 28/100 of Cool Indian Wildlife History Manipur bush quail is a rare bird found in the remote forests of northeast India. Its last confirmed record was all the way back in 1932 until 2006, when Anwaruddin Choudhury, an ornithologist, spotted it again. They have not been recorded since then.

Day 28/100 of Cool Indian Wildlife History In 1810, a military dispatch from Hansi, Haryana confirmed the existence of lions, with two animals hunted in the region. Just next year, in 1811, another message from the same station says they'd killed 43 lions by then, with tigers and two leopards.