Chennai: The five-year-old lion died in Zoologian Park Arignar Anna in Vandalur on Saturday.
This is the third lion that has died at the zoo in the past seven months.
While the first two had died of Coronavirus last year, the zoo authorities claimed that Saturday Wisnu’s death, a five-year-old man, was caused by infection in the food pipeline.
The carcass has been sent to the Government Veterinary College Hospital in Vepery for autopsy.
Veterinarians say it can be shocked by the rupture of the oesophagus and the lungs of the zoo has been temporarily closed to the public until January 31 after 80 employees including a positively tested zoo for Covid-19, official release words from Director AAZP V Karunapriya.
Samples have been collected from other animals and and they will be sent to the National Institute of High Security Animal Diseases (NIHSAD), Bhopal, for screening, he said.
During the second wave, 17 lions fell ill and two died of this disease.
P Ganesan, Chennai-based research veterinarian, said that among the two Covid-19 waves, several ostriches died at the zoo due to unknown diseases.
Instead of pushing the reasons for death under the carpet, the zoo must be more transparent in explaining what happens to animals.
“We did not know whether they had collected samples from the dead lions and sent them to the sequencing of the genome before falling ill.
Only when they began to share information like that, we could find out whether the death was due to the Coronavirus or a pathogen problem,” he said.
The previous state government has formed a state-level task force to provide support to the authorities on prevention and mitigation of Covid-19 infections in wild animals and prisoners in tiger reserves, national parks and wildlife and reserve forest reserves.
The team of six members headed by the Secretary of the State Supriya Sahu was given the task of maintaining the supervision of a close disease.
Some officials from the Forestry Department Tamil N Adu said that this committee will soon publish a report on efforts taken to monitor disease and vaccination etc.