Shrew thought to have been extinct for over two centuries photographed in the Nilgiris www.thehindu.com/sci-tech/ene...

For decades, survival of caracals in the Thar desert was only argued on the basis of alleged sightings. Now, within the same year, we have found two concrete records of the species in the region. www.deccanherald.com/india/rajast...

Today, I learned. Mark Twain came to Delhi in March, 1876. One day, when he woke up in the morning, he saw two monkeys had entered his room from a window he'd left open. One was brushing its hair before the glass, and the other was “reading” his notes and “crying.”

“The plain of Hurriana is like a vast sea; the hill of Tosham and, till lately, a peepul tree near Hansi, like ships in the offing . . . could be seen from a great distance towering over the stunted bushes and grass jungle.” –Quondam, Lion-Shooting, 1833

Well, it's done I guess. Thankfully I was able to stay consistent for a hundred days straight. Hopefully if you followed along, you had fun. I certainly had. 🙏🙏🙏

Day 100/100 of Cool Indian Wildlife History This is the earliest study of a Siberian crane, painted by Ustad Mansur in the early 17th c. They used to migrate from central Asia to India until 2002 when the last was seen in Bharatpur. Their decline was due to hunting along the migration route.

Day 99/100 of Cool Indian Wildlife History Chaura Rasta, a road in Jaipur's old city popular among students for its book market today, used to be lined with cages of tigers and leopards back in the day. Presumably, they were captured from the forests of Jaipur too. Tigers are extinct here now.

Day 98/100 of Cool Indian Wildlife History In 1616, Jahangir wanted to show his marksmanship to the Prince of Mewar, Karan Singh, who asked him to shoot a lion between its eyes. Scouts couldn't find one, so Jahangir did the same with a lioness. This took place at Ajmer, Rajasthan.

Day 97/100 of Cool Indian Wildlife History This photo by a studio called Gobind Ram and Oodey Ram from 1890 shows a tamed cheetah and caracal in Jaipur. From the Mughal period, to the 20th c., Jaipur was among the foremost centres of the elite sport of coursing with cheetahs and caracals in India.

Day 96/100 of Cool Indian Wildlife History Fremlin Carpet was commissioned by W. Fremlin, an agent of the EEIC, in 1635-40. Among many animal motifs, real and imagined, it features three cheetahs chasing blackbucks, making it the earliest artistic depiction of the cheetah in India by the British.

Day 95/100 of Cool Indian Wildlife History Rajkot, Gujarat has many records of multiple cheetahs killed on one hunt. William Loch once speared six of them. E. A. Hardy found another six—one was shot, three speared and two escaped. Some locals too killed a mother and four cubs in 1894.

Last six days left. In less than a week, I won't have my daily ritual of sitting, thinking what wildlife history tidbit I should share today, looking up sources and finally posting it . . .

Day 94/100 of Cool Indian Wildlife History Jack Lowis, an indigo planter in Bihar, once shot a tigress and discovered four cubs that hadn't even opened their eyes yet. While lifting to howdah, his elephant trod one. They raised the other three until 8 months of age and sold them to a German circus.

Day 93/100 of Cool Indian Wildlife History Acc. to T. C. Jerdon (1867), Javan rhinos were found along the Mahanadi river in Odisha. Since this is a unique record, Valentine Ball investigated and learnt of some captive specimens of unknown species but wasn't convinced of Jerdon's claim.

Day 92/100 of Cool Indian Wildlife History In March, 1835 Fanny Parks, an English traveller, reached Fatehpur Sikri. There, she met locals who showed her the skin of a leopard shot in the old ruins about an year ago. She was also told some wolves had killed a child there the previous week.

Day 91/100 of Cool Indian Wildlife History Raja Rudra Chand of Kumaon met the Mughal Emperor Akbar in 1587. He brought a yak and a musk deer. Badayuni, a contemporary historian, describes the latter as, “like a fox, and two small tusks projected in front, and instead of horns it had an elevation,”

Day 90/100 of Cool Indian Wildlife History A. C. Gupta was an officer of the Indian Forest Service who wrote of a tiger that allegedly hunted two rhinos, mother and calf, at the Gorumara National Park, West Bengal in 1951-52. The record is somewhat vague but interesting food for thought regardless.

Day 89/100 of Cool Indian Wildlife History This is the last dhole recorded in Rajasthan. Dr. Dharmendra Khandal saw it in 2004. He managed to capture this photo as an irritated tourist asked the driver to continue forward, presumably looking for tigers in Ranthambore. They were never seen again.

Day 88/100 of Cool Indian Wildlife History Kota was among the last strongholds of the Indian lion before they went extinct everywhere except Gir. An article from 1867 records two instances where entire prides were seen, of nine and ten lions, former of which were all shot dead.

Day 87/100 of Cool Indian Wildlife History Erstwhile State of Jodhpur was dominated by the open grasslands of the Thar desert where lived tens of thousands of blackbucks with large herds in different places. Over time, hunting and habitat loss reduced this to a shadow of its former self.

Just two more weeks . . .

Day 86/100 of Cool Indian Wildlife History Edward Thornton authored a gazetteer of territories under the East India Company rule and other native states in India in 1854. In a description about Jaisalmer's fauna, he writes, “A few lions are said to haunt the wilds about the southern frontier,”

Day 85/100 of Cool Indian Wildlife History This painting, titled Family of Cheetahs in a Rocky Landscape, is attributed to Basawan and dated to 1575-80, when it was made at the court of the Mughal emperor Akbar. Excluding old rock art, it is the earliest known visual record of an Indian cheetah.

Day 84/100 of Cool Indian Wildlife History This miniature painting, dated to late 18th or early 19th century, shows two rhinos facing each other in a captive setting. The piece is from Jaipur, so it's likely that's where the animals were kept. Among the rare records of captive rhinos in Jaipur.

Day 83/100 of Cool Indian Wildlife History Shillingford family were indigo planters in Purnea who used to organize annual hunts in the region for British hunters. They hunted 18 tigers, 27 wild buffaloes, 135 deer, 42 wild pigs and 240 heads of “small game” in a little more than two weeks in 1870.

Day 82/100 of Cool Indian Wildlife History This is an excerpt from a letter written by a British hunter from Meerut in July, 1822 where he recounts the animals he had hunted in India. It is the only known record of lion, tiger and leopard hunted in a single expedition.

Day 81/100 of Cool Indian Wildlife History Nigel Woodyatt in 1923 wrote of two men he knew who had shot tigresses pregnant with six cubs. One wanted the cubs taxidermied as suckling to the mother but since it was expensive, he gave the skins to some ladies, presumably for a purse or something.

Day 80/100 of Cool Indian Wildlife History Edwin Lord Weeks came to Jaipur in the early 1890s. Here, he saw caracals being kept for hunting. He saw keepers taking them for walks. He also saw a hut where two or three were with a keeper, one of which was seemingly sick and being taken care of.

Day 79/100 of Cool Indian Wildlife History Hispid hares are rare wild rabbits found in parts of South Asia. There was a brief period from 1956, to 1971 when we didn't have any concrete records. It was all but considered extinct then. Finally, in 1971, one animal was caught and its existence proved.

Day 78/100 of Cool Indian Wildlife History Dholes have been extinct in Rajasthan since the early 2000s. But in 1986, Divyabhnusinh saw and photographed three of them at Sariska in the northern Aravallis. Two years later, he was informed they were still there but had separated.

Day 77/100 of Cool Indian Wildlife History Today, Ranthambore is the westernmost tiger pop. Historically, Bengal tigers lived in the Indus Valley further west too but went extinct in the early 20th c. So for a long time, westernmost Bengal tiger populations were in the middle of the Thar desert.

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.

We're one month away from finishing this . . .

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.