BENGALURU: Attacked by a tiger two days ago, an
elephant calf
succumbed to grievous injuries on Saturday afternoon on the busy Bandipur-Mudumalai (Kollegal-Kozhikode) highway (
NH 766
) passing through the
Bandipur Tiger Reserve
in
Chamarajanagar district
. Sources in the
Karnataka Forest Department
revealed to TOI that the tiger may have attacked the calf two days ago in the wild.
"The calf must have been attacked by a tiger two days ago as the wounds were visible on the body. It bore the deep canine marks. The jumbo must have escaped the attack with grievous injuries and walked to the highway and died by the roadside. It looks like a four to five-month-old elephant calf," a forest staff revealed. The carcass was seen three kilometres towards the Kekkanahalla interstate forest checkpost. Refusing to leave behind the carcass, the mother of the calf was grieving by the side of the carcass, and the traffic was held up for a few minutes on the highway, triggering chaos in the middle of the tiger reserve.
However, the forest officials quickly swung into action and managed to remove the carcass of the elephant calf from the highway. It took almost an hour for the forest officials to clear the stranded vehicles on both sides. The staffers moved the carcass into the forest. Senior officials from the Bandipur Tiger Reserve revealed that they will soon conduct the postmortem of the carcass.
Forest officials also explained that tigers, generally, do not prey on elephants. “However, on several occasions, tigers have followed elephant herds with juvenile elephants. If any calf is left behind, they will prey on them. However, in this case, other elephants in the herd must have rushed to the calf’s help and the juvenile jumbo escaped from the jaws of death. But it was unfortunate that it succumbed to the injuries,” explained a
conservationist
in Chamarajanagar.
English (US) ·