A four-year-old leopard was found dead in a chicken coop in Kerala’s Palakkad district on Sunday morning after it got stuck in the cage while preying in the previous night, forest officials said.
After post-mortem, chief wildlife veterinary surgeon Arun Zacharia said the animal died due to a health condition called “capture myopathy”, similar to heart attacks in human beings.
The owner of the house in Mannarcaud, Philip, who goes by a single name, said the family heard a commotion at around 2am and found a “big animal” inside the chicken coop.
“It tried to pounce on me when I went to check and I locked the coop and fled to the house. In the morning, we found a leopard dead in the cage and three chickens were also missing. We informed the police and forest officials,” he said.
Forest officials said after eating chicken the tiger found it hard to come out of the coop and injured itself badly and suffered “capture myopathy.” They said the animal was relatively healthy despite some minor injuries. It remained in the coop for more than five hours and died around 6am, they said.
Palakkad district has been facing a number of wildlife incursions recently. Last week, an elephant that wreaked havoc in the district for more than seven months was tranquillised and captured. Later, veterinary doctors found 15 gun pellets inside the body of the elephant, which was named as Dhoni, the name of the village where it was captured from. This month two animal attack fatalities were reported in the state– a farmer died in a tiger attack in Wayanad, north Kerala, on January 12 and a forest watcher was killed in an elephant attack in Idukki on Jan 25.
Wild animal attacks were acute in two districts, Idukki and Wayanad. In view of rising animal attacks and casualties, the state government had recently announced its decision to approach the Supreme Court with a plea to control wild population on a priority basis. Forest minister A K Saseendran’s suggestion that even culling of tigers can be considered triggered protests from environmentalists and green activists.
