Four months after an injured baby jackal weighing 660 grams was found by a crab farmer in Navi Mumbai and hand-raised by a Mumbai-based NGO like a puppy, the jackal has now gained weight to 5.50kg and has also undergone surgery for his injuries.
The jackal, which was found with an injured eye, is understood to have no eye at all probably since birth. Reared in seclusion, after confirming if the jackal can hunt with one eye, the decision to release it in the wild is now being contemplated.
In the last week of February, a Mumbai-based woman was purchasing crab from a crab farmer near Palm Beach Road when she saw that he was also taking care of a baby jackal that was injured.
Pawan Sharma, founder and president, Risqink Association for Wildlife Welfare (RAWW), said, “She offered to rescue him and the farmer agreed. She dropped the baby jackal at a veterinarian’s clinic that closely works with us and thus we got it. Its eye was injured and was difficult to estimate if it had an eye. Due to its low weight, the doctor suggested surgery only after it gained weight.”
Sharma, who is also the honorary wildlife warden, Maharashtra Forest Department, further said that the baby jackal was not more than two weeks old when it was rescued.
“We had even tried to trace its family then, but they were not to be found and due to the injuries it had, we hand-raised it like a puppy. At that point, getting the right treatment was very essential. It took around three more weeks for it to stabilise,” Sharma said.
Post-surgery, it was revealed that it had no eye at all, probably since birth, and that could be one of the reasons that it was abandoned. Now, the eye lid is stitched so that no further harm or infection occurs in the eye. After the surgery, the jackal was shifted into an enclosure and a human intervention was made only while giving food. Based on its ability to hunt, it will be released in the wild.