June 1 was a day of tragedy for the city zoo when it lost a popular and dedicated animal keeper to a snakebite, but it was also a day when life reaffirmed itself in a way with the birth of a baby leopard at the facility.
Zoo keepers who reached the animal enclosure that morning were treated to the sight of a newborn, presumably born sometime in the night to Janavi, a 10-year-old leopard who was brought to the city zoo in November 2015 from the Meppadi forest range in Wayanad. The father is Shukkoor, a leopard brought to the Neyyar sanctuary initially from Kannur in mid-2017.
Both the mother leopard and the cub are healthy, zoo authorities said.
The cub, yet to open its eyes, and the mother leopard are housed in a separate enclosure, away from the other four male and one female leopard, and will remain like that till the cub is some months old at least, they said.
