January 25, 2003

Anarkali the ever-popular lady elephant who has made Karachi Zoo a favourite place for children has become addicted to tea. When the mahout gets a cup for himself and his assistant, our dear elephant opens her mouth by lifting her heavy trunk and utters a gruff “Hoon” indicating that she wants to have some tea, too.

Although she gets her share of sugarcane, Lucerne and hay, she still has a craving for more food. Elephants forage for twelve to fifteen hours in the wild because their body (over two tons in weight) needs to burn several thousands of calories to produce energy to keep it in working order. Since they consume only the green branches, leaves and hay, they do not release enough body heat, as with a diet of pulses, wheat corn, eggs, fish and chicken.

It will be interesting for you to know how much energy the food we eat releases. Half a cup of cooked carrots yield 25 calories, an eighteen inches long cucumber gives 20, a cupful of cauliflower 30, one slice 75, one tablespoonful peanut butter 100, one boiled egg 75, one average serving of fish 100, one Gulab jamun 387 and 100 gm of Jalebi 494.

I had prepared a menu for Anarkali that consisted of two-kilo rice boiled with one kilo of chick pea (whole chanaa) with one kilo of unprocessed sugar (gur) as daily lunch plus twenty kilo of Lucerne and hay. The zoo has now replaced it with a load of sugar cane plus the green and the dry grass.

Anarkali also relishes cold drinks during the summer. She drinks ten bottles of soft drink in a day most of which is offered to her by the visitors who love to pour the content themselves in the inoffensive wide mouth which she opens with gusto. Ten bottles are like a single gulp in her enormous mouth.

She is very friendly and loves to accept toffee, cookies and biscuits from the hands of children. The kids in turn emit peals of laughter when they see Anarkali take three biscuits in one go and extend her trunk for more with a pleading “Hooon”.

Elephants are very social animals, in fact the most social in all animals. They are helpful to each other all the while, allowing the new-born to run among the legs of other elephant aunties, suckling here and there even when there is no milk in some. Yet they never rebuke or push the baby away. The babies, known as calves, walk in front while the mummy and aunts walk in the second order. The big powerful males bring up the rear. They are like guards walking behind you to assure your safety because in the wild the lions and hyenas are likely to attack the baby.

Anarkali offers rides only in the late afternoons or evenings. As her black skin is susceptible to absorbing heat in the day, she has to be kept under a cool shade at noon. Every morning during the summer, she gets a shower, which she enjoys tremendously.

Elephants once roamed in the area where we have Orangi town today. Due to its rainy climate millions of years ago, the place was lush green. Emperor Babar hunted rhinoceros in the marshes near Multan in the recent time in the geological terminology. Now elephants are in trouble in all countries — Africa, India, Thailand and Burma.

By the way, the first elephant ever to arrive in Karachi zoo named Mato (mother) came from Burma. She was such a loving creature. Mato played mouth organ every day to the delight of visitors.

Since males get restless and violent every year for a fortnight or so, they are not considered safe for a zoo. Bahadur the male elephant of Lahore was shot dead by police because the authorities were not aware of this cyclic rutting behaviour of the male elephants. The irritability was taken as ‘madness’, which resulted in the killing of the poor creature. The restlessness and irritability disappears automatically and the animal becomes safe and obedient once more after the brief two to three weeks.

In some foreign zoos elephants are taught to paint, too. They dip the brush in different colour paints and rub it on broad canvases. It is an amusing sight for people who buy and hang the finished pieces in their drawing rooms as an item of curiosity. The proceeds are diverted towards the welfare agencies working for elephants.

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