“Which is India’s largest mammal and our largest carnivore?” quizzes conservationist and author Vivek Menon. “You might guess elephant and tiger, and you wouldn’t be the only one to,” he says before revealing the right answers — the blue whale and the brown bear.

The greater one-horned rhinoceros, which can be found at Kaziranga National Park, Assam

What Menon is trying to illustrate is that a majority of Indians lack knowledge about the country’s native mammals. Most of what people know is largely restricted to the glamorous big cat or the seemingly affable elephant.

“But a large variety of mammals are left in the dark; no one really talks about them. Take the state of Maharashtra, for instance. Yes, tiger conservation is just as important here, but what about other threatened species, including the Kondana Rat, which can be found only in Maharashtra in the Pune-Satara region,” he rues.