Sunny’s wait for partner to end as Hyderabad Zoo to get female giraffe

Ever since his former partner Tsunami Basant, a 20-year male giraffe, passed away on October 28, 2024, due to old age complications, the 10-year-old Sunny has been leading a solitary life. The new female giraffe, which is around two years old, will join Sunny at Hyderabad Zoo

Hyderabad: Ending the lonely existence of Sunny, the male giraffe at Nehru Zoological Park, a female giraffe is set to arrive here soon.

According to the zoo curator, J Vasantha, the female giraffe, aged around two years, is being brought from Mysore Zoo. “We will soon be welcoming a female giraffe,” NZP Curator J Vasantha told Telangana Today.

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A gentle giant, Sunny was brought to NZP under an animal exchange programme from the Kolkata Zoo along with a female partner, Bubli, in 2019. However, Bubli passed away after a brief illness in 2021.

When Bubli passed away, the zoo was left with two male giraffes, Sunny and 20-year-old Tsunami Basant, with the latter passing away in October last year. Since then, the 10-year-old Sunny has been leading a solitary life in the sprawling zoo.

Apart from the female giraffe, the zoo is planning to bring in a hippopotamus, and the Mumbai Zoo has already been approached for the river horse. At present, the zoo is home to three hippopotami — one aged male and two females.

Also in the pipeline are Rhea birds, called South American ostriches. Currently, the zoo has eight of these large flightless birds.

As reported earlier, the Hyderabad Zoo will soon receive mandrills from the Tata Zoological Park, Jamshedpur, Jharkhand, apart from Hoolock gibbons, India’s only ape species, from Nagaland Zoo Park.

As part of its recent annual day celebrations, the zoo unveiled three zebras — two males and one female — which have become major crowd pullers. These animals were brought from Radha Krishna Trust, a wing of Vantara by Reliance Foundation in Gujarat, under an animal exchange programme, in exchange for the mouse deer collection. Plans are afoot to launch a new breeding programme aimed at conserving these exotic species.

199 species at Nehru Zoo:
• 51 mammals
• 109 birds
• 37 reptiles
• 2 amphibians

Total collection at Nehru Zoo:
• 518 mammals
• 1,361 birds
• 328 reptiles
• 8 amphibians