Visakhapatnam: Injecting some much needed humour in the bifurcation issue, minister for environment and forests, Satrucherla Vijayarama Raju, on Sunday named two newly brought in giraffes from Malaysia’s Negara Zoo as ‘Samaikhya’ and ‘Andhra’, much to the delight of those present.
In a moment of inspiration, Raju, who had been hesitating to release the exotic animals as he didn’t want to attend a public function fearing the wrath of integrationists, apparently came up with the names, guaranteed to please everyone at the Indira Gandhi Zoological Park in the city.
Raju also released a one-horned Asian rhinoceros, Nakul, brought from the Kanpur Zoo, and a pair of black swans and a pair of white swans brought from the Chennai Zoo into their new enclosures at the zoo on Sunday.
Raju said that the IGZP was Asia’s only zoo whose boundary was washed by the Bay of Bengal and which spread over an area of 625 acres of the Seethakonda Reserve Forest in the city.
He said that thanks to the continuous efforts of zoo curator G. Ramalingam, around eight lakh people visited the IGVP in the last fiscal year and the gate collection was '1.92 crore, the highest ever in the zoo’s history.
