Zero sound pollution helps incubation of Rheas

 

Five more flightless rhea birds are expected to be incubated in the coming days. A majority of the leading zoos in the country are looking for bird/animal exchanges with rheas that are expected to be a huge bonus for the city zoo.

 

For years, the Museum and Zoo authorities were left red-faced over several professional engineering college students resorting to high decibel celebrations at the open air auditorium.

 

Senior veterinary surgeon Dr. Jacob Alexander recalls there have been several instances of such colleges resorting to bursting firecrackers at the end of their programmes.

 

“Rhea is a large, flightless bird that is highly sensitive and belongs to South America and is similar to the ostrich. They bang their neck on the cage and get badly wounded. This is the first time that we were hatching so many rheas, six brown rheas and six white rheas over the last few months. There has not been much hullabaloo from Nishagandhi. We are elated that more than half a dozen zoos in the country are keen to have rhea on barter,” he said.

 

Several pairs of rhea had died dashing the hopes of the zoo authorities due to noise pollution. Recently the zoo authorities had given two rheas to National Zoological Gardens in New Delhi in exchange for a male white tiger, Sravan.

 

The average incubation period of rhea is 36 days. Recently, State Human Rights Commission had intervened on a complaint from lawyer V. Devadas, a Kannur native, against the noise pollution from Nishagandhi.

 

Fortunately, it opened the eyes of the authorities including the district collector, a senior environmental engineer attached to the State Pollution Control Board and the city police commissioner which helped the rhea to bounce back to life.