India: Delhi zoo sending back gluttonous jaguar that shuns female company

A 12-year-old jaguar that was sent on a loan to the Delhi zoo in India has been found to be "too fat to breed" and is more interested in his meals then the embrace of his would-be female partner. Salman is being sent back to the country's southern state of Kerala from where he was borrowed last October. Ever since his arrival he has shown no interest in his female partner.

"The female jaguar has been trying to entice him but he is simply lazy and does not respond to her overtures," Delhi zoo curator Riaz Khan told AFP. "The fact is he is too fat to breed and we have decided to send him back to Kerala."

Khan said Salman, who has to be feed some six kilograms (13 pounds) of buffalo meat every day "reaches out for its meals more keenly" than for the company of female would-be partner Kalpana. The jaguar has not been weighed but caretakers believe Salman could be more than 100 kilograms (220 pounds). A jaguar's normal weight is considered to be between 56 and 96 kilograms.

According to the Indian Express, caretakers are frustrated and have given up hope that the jaguar will ever start a family after he refuses to have sex with his female partner. "He is a glutton, just loves to eat and relax. Every morning, we find leftovers in the cages of the other jaguars but this one polishes off his entire food. I am sure if we gave him more food, he would finish off that too. He has a bigger appetite than the tigers here," one of Salman's keepers was quoted as saying by RT news. The jaguar was borrowed from the Thiruvananthapuram Zoological Garden in Kerala.