At its lowest point, fewer than 200 hangul survived on earth. All of them in one national park on the outskirts of Srinagar. The hangul is India’s most endangered deer, the state animal of Jammu and Kashmir, and the only survivor of a subspecies of red deer that once ranged across the length of the western Himalayas. It is, very slowly, coming back.
Category Archive: Animal Facts
The nilgai is India’s largest antelope, one of its most widely distributed large mammals, and possibly its most politically contested. In Bihar it is protected by religious sentiment. In Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh it has been declared vermin. The same animal, under the same law, treated in entirely opposite ways depending on where it stands.
The sambar is India’s largest deer, the tiger’s most important prey across much of its range, and one of the least-watched large mammals in the Indian forest. Its invisibility is almost entirely intentional.
No animal in India is more seen, more photographed, or more taken for granted than the chital. That is precisely why it deserves a closer look.
Clocked at 80 km/h across open grassland, the blackbuck is India’s fastest land animal. It was once nearly extinct. Now it’s running again in Chhattisgarh — after 50 years of absence.
In 1967, there were just 66 barasingha left in Kanha. All of them lived in one meadow in that forest. This is how India pulled its most improbable deer back from the edge.
The Chousingha is the only living animal in the world with four horns. It lives in India’s dry forests, weighs less than a medium-sized dog, and is classified as Vulnerable — yet most Indians have never heard of it.
