A different wedding ceremony

Like any other marriage ceremony, there was a festive mood yesterday at the Chittagong zoo where a lion and a lioness “tied the knot”. 

The whole area was decorated with colourful balloons and festoons. A beautiful gate was also erected, through which over a thousand visitors came to see and wish the bride and bridegroom in the morning.

Chittagong Deputy Commissioner Mesbah Uddin inaugurated the unique ceremony by cutting a cake at 11:00am. The special heart-shaped cake was made of raw beef and chicken for the newly-wed couple.

Through the ceremony, a lioness of the zoo got a male companion after more than a decade. The zoo authority brought the lion from the Rangpur zoo on September 5 this year.

While inaugurating the ceremony, Mesbah, also the president of the zoo's managing committee, said the marriage ceremony was a unique programme that would attract more visitors to the zoo.

He also expressed the hope that the number of lions at the zoo would increase through breeding and that the zoo authority would be able to bring tiger and other animals soon to make the place more attractive to animal lovers.

There was no lion at the zoo for nearly a decade. Two lionesses -- Nova and Borsha -- were born at the zoo in 2005. Their mother Lakki died in 2005 and father Raaz in 2008. Since then the lionesses were kept in the zoo without any companion.

The authority was searching for a male lion and learnt that there were two male lions in the Rangpur zoo. After negotiations, the two zoo authorities agreed to exchange one male and female lions.

Borsha was sent to the Rangpur zoo from Chittagong on August 28. There it will live with “Raza”. A lion named Badsha was brought to the Chittagong zoo on September 5.

The lions and lionesses are still kept in separate cages so that they do not fight and adjust to the new environment, said Shahadat Hossain, veterinary officer of the Chittagong zoo.

So far the zoo has 367 animals of 67 species. But there is no tiger, zebra, giraffe etc.

Chowdhury Md Mongur Morshed, deputy curator of the zoo, said they hoped that the programme would infuse love for animals into people, especially children.