50 Fun Facts About Indian Wildlife

Which cattle painkiller, banned in India in 2006, wiped out the country's Gyps vultures?

Diclofenac given to cattle caused kidney failure in vultures that fed on the carcasses, and the white-rumped vulture fell 99.7% between 1993 and 2002. Parsi sky burials in Mumbai faltered as bodies took six months to disappear.

Whose 1515 woodcut of an Indian rhinoceros sent from Gujarat to Lisbon was drawn without seeing it?

Albrecht Dürer worked from a written description and a brief sketch, the first rhinoceros in Europe since Roman times having reached Lisbon in May 1515. The real animal drowned in a shipwreck on its way to the Pope.

Which Madhya Pradesh park received eight cheetahs flown in from Namibia on 17 September 2022?

Kuno got five females and three males aged four to six, released by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on his birthday, and twelve more cheetahs arrived from South Africa in February 2023.

Poaching which animal in 1998 earned Bollywood star Salman Khan a five-year sentence in 2018?

Blackbuck are revered by the Bishnoi community of Rajasthan, who care for them as sacred, and the antelope can sprint at 80 km/h.

Which northeastern park, built on floating phumdi mats, is the world's only floating national park?

Keibul Lamjao's phumdis are thick mats of decaying vegetation and soil, and they are the last refuge of the sangai, the brow-antlered deer that is Manipur's state animal.

Which park within Mumbai's municipal limits is famed for leopards living beside millions of people?

Sanjay Gandhi National Park is among India's most visited protected areas and holds the 2,400-year-old Kanheri Caves cut by Buddhist monks. Researchers now frame its leopards as a case of coexistence rather than conflict.

Which Tamil Nadu reserve is the setting of The Elephant Whisperers, winner of a 2023 Academy Award?

In Mudumalai, Bomman and Bellie, a Kattunayakan couple, raised the orphaned calf Raghu, and the film became the first Indian winner of Best Documentary Short.

Which state burned a stockpile of 2,479 poached rhino horns at Bokakhat on World Rhino Day 2021?

Assam holds most of the world's one-horned rhinoceroses, and the horns were given a 21-gun salute before burning so that keeping them would not lend support to the myth of their medicinal value.

Which Indian crocodile balances sticks on its head to lure birds hunting for nesting material?

The mugger takes its name from magar, the Hindi word for crocodile, and the broad-snouted species has been called the marsh crocodile since the late 1930s.

Which Rajasthan reserve near Alwar was declared empty of tigers in 2005 after poachers wiped them out?

Sariska was restocked from June 2008 by the first aerial translocation of a tiger, a male flown in by helicopter, followed by a second tiger that July and a tigress in February 2009.

Which nearly blind river mammal, known locally as the susu, is India's national aquatic animal?

The Gangetic dolphin hunts murky water by echolocation with tiny lensless eyes, and it shares its symbolic role with the Indus dolphin, Pakistan's national aquatic animal.

Which 1972 law largely outlawed hunting in India and gives Schedule I species absolute cover?

The Wild Life (Protection) Act was enacted on 9 September 1972 and extends to the whole of India; Schedule I and part II of Schedule II give their species absolute protection.

Which Himalayan animal has been Sikkim's state animal since the early 1990s?

The red panda's false thumb is an extension of a wrist bone, the radial sesamoid, and in India the animal is found only in Sikkim, West Bengal and Arunachal Pradesh.

Which bird, the tallest that can fly at up to 1.8 metres, became Uttar Pradesh's state bird in 2013?

The sarus crane is widely believed to pair for life, though 'divorces' and mate replacement have been recorded, and it is classed as vulnerable on the IUCN Red List.

Which large forest bird is the state bird of both Kerala and Arunachal Pradesh?

The great hornbill's female seals herself into a tree hollow with a plaster made mostly of faeces, and the species has lived nearly 50 years in captivity.

Which Rajasthan tiger reserve surrounds a 10th-century Chauhan hill fort made a UNESCO site in 2013?

Ranthambore Fort was founded by the Chauhan king Sapaldaksha in the mid-10th century, and its Trinetra Ganesha temple draws thousands of pilgrims every Wednesday.

Which Rajasthan bird park, a duck-shooting reserve from 1899, was World Heritage-listed in 1985?

Keoladeo became the Bharatpur Bird Sanctuary in 1956 and was inscribed under UNESCO's biodiversity criterion, numbered (iv) in 1985 and (x) today; its last Siberian cranes arrived in the winter of 2001–02.

Which small bird is the state bird of both Delhi and Bihar?

Delhi adopted the house sparrow in August 2012 as its numbers in the capital collapsed, while Gujarat picked the greater flamingo and Puducherry and Jharkhand both chose the Asian koel.

Which ape, the only one native to India, lives in the forests of the seven northeastern states?

Hoolock gibbons sing to locate family members and warn off rivals, and the Hollongapar sanctuary near Jorhat held 125 of them in 2023, with one group stranded by a railway line that splits the forest.

Which Rajasthan state bird, numbering about 150 by 2018, keeps colliding with power lines in the Thar?

The great Indian bustard was a proposed candidate for India's national bird but was dropped in favour of the peafowl, and its numbers fell from about 250 in 2011 to 150 in 2018.

Which Indian animal carries its cubs on its back and sucks up termites with a noise heard 180 metres away?

Sloth bear cubs ride their mother until they reach a third of her size, and Kipling's 'sleepy old brown bear' Baloo is usually read as a sloth bear, the only bear living in the Seoni forests where The Jungle Book is set.

Which ornithologist, the 'Birdman of India', first published The Book of Indian Birds in 1941?

Salim Ali was the first Indian to run systematic bird surveys across the country, and his influence helped save the Silent Valley rainforest from a dam.

Which 1944 Jim Corbett book, filmed by Universal in 1948, had half a million copies in print by 1946?

Man-Eaters of Kumaon recounts Corbett's hunts of man-eating tigers and leopards from the 1900s to the 1930s, and by May 1946 it had been translated into four Western languages and six Indian ones.

Which Seoni-district reserve in Madhya Pradesh is among the places said to have inspired The Jungle Book?

Pench has formed the core of a tiger reserve since 1992 and covers 292.85 square kilometres, one of many forests that may have given Kipling his Mowgli setting.

Which Ladakh park, the largest in India, has the highest snow leopard density of any protected area?

Hemis sits 50 km from Leh at 3,000 to 6,000 metres and holds the 400-year-old Hemis Monastery, a Tibetan Buddhist pilgrimage site; a 2024 survey estimated 477 snow leopards (range 380–598) across Ladakh.

Which marine mammal is the state animal of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands?

The dugong is the only marine mammal chosen as an Indian state or territory symbol, while Lakshadweep picked the butterfly fish.

Which antelope, the largest in Asia, is the state animal of Delhi?

The nilgai's name fuses the Hindi nil (blue) and gai (cow), and Bihar had it declared vermin so farmers could shoot the crop-raiding herds.

Which cat, Meghalaya's state animal, is called a 'modern-day sabre-tooth' for its oversized canines?

The clouded leopard can climb down tree trunks head first and hang from branches by its hind paws, and in India it ranges across Sikkim, the northeast and northern West Bengal.

Under which governor's name was India's first national park created in 1936 in today's Uttarakhand?

Hailey National Park covered 323.75 sq km when Sir Malcolm Hailey governed the United Provinces, and it became Ramganga National Park in 1954–55 before taking Jim Corbett's name a year later.

Which deity do Sundarbans honey collectors invoke for protection before entering tiger country?

Bonbibi is venerated by both Hindu and Muslim residents of the delta, and her arch-enemy Dakshin Rai, the 'Lord of the South', attacks people in the guise of a tiger.

Which three-state river reserve protects the gharial and the red-crowned roofed turtle?

The National Chambal Sanctuary stretches 5,400 sq km along the Chambal, first declared in Madhya Pradesh in 1978, and its long narrow eco-reserve is co-administered by Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh.

Which park 22 km from Srinagar, first protected in 1910, is famed for the hangul, or Kashmir stag?

Dachigam means 'ten villages', after those relocated to make the park, which began under the Maharaja of Jammu and Kashmir and was created to secure clean drinking water for Srinagar.

Which mountain goat, the state animal of Tamil Nadu, is most numerous in Kerala's Eravikulam park?

The Nilgiri tahr is endemic to the Nilgiri Hills and southern Western Ghats, and adult males are called 'saddlebacks' for the dark patch on their backs; the species is listed as endangered.

Which Gujarat salt desert holds the Indian Wild Ass Sanctuary, the last refuge of the khur clocked at 70–80 km/h?

The Little Rann of Kutch held only 720 wild asses in 1976, and the census climbed to 7,672 in 2024 within the Indian Wild Ass Sanctuary.

What Spanish term names the synchronised mass nesting of olive ridley turtles on Odisha's beaches?

An arribada, from the Spanish for 'arrival', can bring thousands of females ashore together; in one week of 1991 over 600,000 turtles nested along Odisha's coast.

Which Mandla-district tiger reserve was India's first with an official mascot, Bhoorsingh?

Kanha's mascot celebrates the hard-ground barasingha, the swamp deer that is the state animal of both Madhya Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh.

Which crested pheasant is the state bird of Uttarakhand and, as the danphe, the national bird of Nepal?

The Himalayan monal male carries a long metallic green crest and multicoloured plumage over uniformly rufous tail feathers, while Himachal Pradesh chose the western tragopan instead.

Which multicoloured rodent, with a head-and-body length up to 50 cm, is Maharashtra's state animal?

The Indian giant squirrel, shekaru in Marathi, is one of the largest squirrels anywhere and is also called the Malabar giant squirrel.

Which World Heritage park on the Bhutan border spent 1992 to 2011 on UNESCO's list of sites in danger?

Manas was listed in 1985 and then flagged for heavy poaching and insurgent violence; it borders Bhutan's Royal Manas park and is also a tiger reserve and an elephant reserve.

Which Delhi Zoo director, dubbed the 'Tiger Man of India', was the first head of Project Tiger in 1973?

Kailash Sankhala received the Padma Shri in 1992, nearly two decades after the scheme he led was launched on 1 April 1973.

Whose failure to spot a rhinoceros at Kaziranga in 1904 pushed her viceroy husband to protect the area?

Lady Curzon's plea set Kaziranga's protection in motion, and the park was inscribed as a World Heritage Site in 1985; its animals still flee the Brahmaputra floods to the Mikir Hills.

Which tiger reserve, the largest in India, straddles the Krishna river in the Nallamala hills?

Nagarjunsagar-Srisailam covers 3,728 sq km with a 1,200 sq km core, and the Krishna cuts a basin almost 200 metres deep for 130 km through the reserve.

Which Jharkhand forest, later one of the first nine tiger reserves, ran a pugmark count of tigers in 1932?

Palamau's 1932 count ran under divisional forest officer J. W. Nicholson, and the reserve combines the 979 sq km Palamau sanctuary with the 226 sq km Betla National Park.

Which lizard, in Maratha legend, was tied to a rope so Tanaji Malusare could scale a fort wall?

The Bengal monitor, ghorpad in Marathi, can reach 175 cm, and the Maratha Ghorpade clan likewise traces its name to an ancestor said to have scaled a fort wall behind a tethered monitor lizard.

Which Western Ghats amphibian, first described in 2003, surfaces for only two weeks a year to mate?

The purple frog's closest relatives are the Sooglossidae of the Seychelles, and its pig-like snout earns it the name purple pig-nosed frog.

Which body, founded by eight men at a Mumbai museum in 1883, is among India's largest conservation NGOs?

The Bombay Natural History Society met first in the Victoria and Albert Museum on 15 September 1883, and today publishes its own journal from a purpose-built headquarters in south Mumbai.

Which Tamil Nadu wetland, protected by an 18th-century order its villagers won, became a sanctuary in 1936?

Vedanthangal's villagers complained to the Chingleput collector about British soldiers shooting the birds and obtained a written cowle protecting them, and the site was the first such protected area inside Indian boundaries.

Which antelope of the Tibetan plateau and Ladakh is killed for shahtoosh, its underfur woven into shawls?

The chiru's underfur is usually obtained after death, and shahtoosh shawls were traditionally given as wedding gifts in India, with Kashmir as the weaving centre; its westernmost herds graze the Depsang Plains at 5,500 m.

Which raptor, netted en masse at Nagaland's Pangti village in 2012, migrates over the Arabian Sea to Africa?

The Amur falcon breeds in south-eastern Siberia and northern China and crosses India in large flocks, and a successful campaign begun after the 2012 trapping ended the killing.

Which nocturnal Indian snake has fangs so small that a sleeping victim may never notice the bite?

The common krait's untreated bites carry a mortality rate as high as 70–80%, with a lethal dose for humans of just 2–3 mg, and it ranges from Afghanistan to Bangladesh.