Thailand marks World Rhino Day 2016

CHIANG MAI, Sept 22 (TNA) -- The Chiang Mai Zoo has organised a special feast for the only Indian rhinoceros in country, Kali, to mark the World Rhino Day which falls September 22 of every year. The zoo held various activities on the occasion of the World Rhino Day 2016, including a special feast for the 31-year-old female Indian rhino, Kali, who had come of her stall to enjoy her favourite food, such as fresh hay, banana trees, ripe bananas, fresh grass, pumpkins, watermelons, corns, and carrots. Kali was a gift presented to HM King Bhumibol Adulyadej by a Nepalese King, after which HM King Bhumibol had presented the rhino to the Zoological Park Organisation on September 22, 1986. Kali was then transported to the Chiang Mai Zoo, where she had lived there ever since with another rhino, a black rhinoceros from Singapore named Nadi. Kali has only horn and weighs about 3 tonnes. She is 2 metres tall and does not have any mate. Since Nadi died 14 years, Kali has been living alone at the zoo. A male rhino has been brought to zoo in 2012 for Kali to mate and breed, but the process failed. Chiang Mai Zoo Director-general Niphon Wichairat said a team of veterinarians and caretakers have always been taking good care Kali but she is now very old and had passed her mating age. In celebrations of the World Rhino Day, the Chiang Mai Zoo would organise activities annually to stimulate the preservation and love for the animal, as the rhinoceros have been listed on the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) Appendix I for a species currently threatened with extinction. (TNA)