Calcutta: Two lions, two jaguars and six mouse deer arrived at Alipore zoo from Nehru Zoological Park, Hyderabad, on Sunday morning.

The animals reached the zoo as part of an exchange programme. The Hyderabad zoo will receive a male and a female giraffe in return.

The exchange will take the lion count at the city zoo to four. The giraffe count will come down to eight, though.

The other two lions at the zoo are more than 20 years old. They are currently in the zoo hospital for age-related ailments.

They have been out of public view for close to a year now, a zoo official said.

The zoo didn't have jaguars and mouse deer for at least a decade, the official said.

Viswas, 10, and Sruti, 4, the lions, Malala and Arya, the female and male jaguars aged a little over three, and the mouse deer were given ORS and light food, as they were exhausted, zoo director Asis Kumar Samanta said.

A light meal for the lions meant around 2.5kg of chicken for each, he said. "They will get mutton and beef after a few days."

The animals arrived on trucks through Odisha and West Midnapore. They had left Hyderabad on Thursday evening.

The police superintendents of the districts through which the convoy passed were alerted in advance, V.K. Yadav, member secretary, Bengal Zoo Authority, said. The animals reached Alipore around 4am.

The lion enclosure has been decked out. Beds made of wooden logs have been readied in view of the approaching winter. A new enclosure has been built for the jaguars. It has a glass wall, similar to the new tiger enclosure for public viewing, director Samanta said. "But people can't see them from everywhere."

The animals will undergo quarantine checks for three weeks before they are fit for display, he said.