Wildlife authorities said on Wednesday they had been forced to euthanise ”Big Mama”, a giant 52-year-old Nile crocodile that had been a star attraction at a Ugandan zoo for nearly half a century.
Keepers at the Uganda Wildlife Education Centre in Entebbe, south of the capital, put down the ailing reptile at the weekend after determining that an illness it had been suffering from since last year was terminal, they said.
”The crocodile had been ill for a very long time,” Uganda Wildlife Authority chief Moses Mapesa said. ”For several months it had not been moving or feeding itself.
”We tried to treat it but it didn’t respond to medication and we decided to put it to rest in a manner that was not brutal or cruel,” he said.
Andrew Sseguya, the head of the wildlife centre, said the 3,9m-long, 300kg-plus croc was believed to have ”suffered kidney failure that led to multiple organ failure”.
Big Mama was given its nickname shortly after being brought to the zoo in 1957, but veterinarians quickly discovered that a more appropriate moniker would have been ”Big Papa”.
The original name stuck, however, and Big Mama had been highly popular with generations of zoo visitors, according to Sseguya, who said trophies from Big Mama would be preserved for teaching and research for conservation education. — Sapa-AFP