Tamil Nadu is the southernmost state of India. The tenth largest Indian state by area and the sixth largest by population, Tamil Nadu is the home of the Tamil people, whose Tamil language—one of the longest surviving classical languages in the world—is widely spoken in the state and serves as its official language. The capital and largest city is Chennai.
Chennai, formerly known as Madras, is the capital city of Tamil Nadu, the southernmost state of India. It is the state's primate city both in area and population and is located on the Coromandel Coast of the Bay of Bengal. According to the 2011 Indian census, Chennai is the sixth-most populous city in India and forms the fourth-most populous urban agglomeration. Incorporated in 1866, the Greater Chennai Corporation is the oldest municipal corporation of India and the second oldest in the world after London.
A hedgehog is a spiny mammal of the subfamily Erinaceinae, in the eulipotyphlan family Erinaceidae. There are seventeen species of hedgehog in five genera found throughout parts of Europe, Asia, and Africa, and in New Zealand by introduction. There are no hedgehogs native to Australia and no living species native to the Americas. However, the extinct genus Amphechinus was once present in North America.
The Western Ghats, also known as the Sahyadri mountain range, is a mountain range that covers an area of 160,000 km2 (62,000 sq mi) in a stretch of 1,600 km (990 mi) parallel to the western coast of the Indian peninsula, traversing the states of Gujarat, Maharashtra, Goa, Karnataka, Kerala and Tamil Nadu. It is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and is one of the 36 biodiversity hotspots in the world. It is sometimes called the Great Escarpment of India. It contains a very large proportion of the country's flora and fauna, many of which are endemic to this region. The Western Ghats are older than the Himalayas. They influence Indian monsoon weather patterns by intercepting the rain-laden monsoon winds that sweep in from the south-west during late summer. The range runs north to south along the western edge of the Deccan Plateau and separates the plateau from a narrow coastal plain called the Western Coastal Plains along the Arabian Sea. A total of 39 areas in the Western Ghats, including national parks, wildlife sanctuaries and reserve forests, were designated as world heritage sites in 2012 – twenty in Kerala, ten in Karnataka, six in Tamil Nadu and four in Maharashtra.
South India, also known as Peninsular India, is the southern part of the peninsular Deccan Plateau in India encompassing the states of Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Kerala, Tamil Nadu and Telangana as well as the union territories of Lakshadweep and Puducherry, occupying 19.31% of India's area and 20% of India's population. It is bound by the Bay of Bengal in the east, the Arabian Sea in the west and the Indian Ocean in the south. The geography of the region is diverse, with two mountain ranges, the Western and Eastern Ghats, bordering the plateau heartland. The Godavari, Krishna, Kaveri, Tungabhadra and Vaigai rivers are important non-perennial sources of water. Chennai, Bangalore, Hyderabad, Coimbatore, Kochi and Visakhapatnam are the largest urban areas in the region.
Erinaceidae is a family in the order Eulipotyphla, consisting of the hedgehogs and moonrats. Until recently, it was assigned to the order Erinaceomorpha, which has been subsumed with the paraphyletic Soricomorpha into Eulipotyphla. Eulipotyphla has been shown to be monophyletic; Soricomorpha is paraphyletic because Soricidae shared a more recent common ancestor with Erinaceidae than with other soricomorphs.
Madras Medical College (MMC) is a public medical college located in Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India. Established in 1835, it is one of the oldest medical colleges in India, as well as in Asia.
Guindy National Park is a 2.70 km2 (1.04 sq mi) protected area of Tamil Nadu, located in Chennai, India, is the 8th-smallest National Park of India and one of the very few national parks situated inside a city. The park is an extension of the grounds surrounding Raj Bhavan, formerly known as the 'Guindy Lodge', the official residence of the governor of Tamil Nadu, India. It extends deep inside the governor's estate, enclosing beautiful forests, scrub lands, lakes and streams.
Dr. Ambedkar Government Law College, commonly known by its former name Madras Law College, is a law school, located in Chennai (Madras), Tamil Nadu, India. It is also referred to as Government Law College or GLC, Chennai. It was established in 1891. It was renamed in 1990, as Dr. Ambedkar Government Law College, by the Government of Tamil Nadu in commemoration of the birth centenary of B. R. Ambedkar. In 1997, the Government of Tamil Nadu passed an Act which brought the college under the wings of the newly established Tamil Nadu Dr. Ambedkar Law University, splitting the college from the University of Madras.
Brandt's hedgehog is a species of desert hedgehog native to parts of the Middle East and Central Asia. Its common name derives from its having first been described by Johann Friedrich von Brandt, a director of the Zoological Department at the St Petersburg Academy of Sciences.
The Indian hedgehog is a species of hedgehog native to India and Pakistan. It mainly lives in sandy desert areas but can be found in other environments.
The Deccan thorn scrub forests are a xeric shrubland ecoregion of south India and northern Sri Lanka. Historically this area was covered by tropical dry deciduous forest, but this only remains in isolated fragments. The vegetation now consists of mainly of southern tropical thorn scrub type forests. These consist of open woodland with thorny trees with short trunks and low, branching crowns; spiny and xerophytic shrubs; and dry grassland. This is the habitat of the great Indian bustard and blackbuck, though these and other animals are declining in numbers; this area was at one time home to large numbers of elephants and tigers. Almost 350 species of bird have been recorded here. The remaining natural habitat is threatened by overgrazing and invasive weeds, but there are a number of small protected areas which provide a haven for the wildlife. Trees in these forests have adapted to not require much water.
DakshinaChitra is a living-history museum in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu, dedicated to South Indian heritage and culture. It is located 25 kilometres (16 mi) to the south of Chennai. Opened to the public on 14 December 1996, the museum was founded and is being managed by the Madras Craft Foundation (MCF). The MCF was established in 1984. Deborah Thiagarajan, an Indian art historian of American origin, governs the museum. The museum is built on 10 acres (4.0 ha) of land taken on a 33-year lease from the Government of Tamil Nadu. Located at Muttukadu, on the East Coast Road connecting Chennai and Pondicherry, the site overlooks Bay of Bengal.
Filmfare Awards South is the South Indian segment of the annual Filmfare Awards. They are presented by Filmfare magazine to honour artistic and technical excellence in the Indian film industry encompassing four languages: Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam and Kannada. When it was introduced in 1954, the Filmfare Awards initially only recognized achievements in the Hindi film industry. In 1964 the awards were extended to Tamil, Telugu, Bengali and Marathi languages. Malayalam cinema was included in the awards in 1967 and Kannada cinema followed in 1970.
Mullaperiyar DamIPA:[mulːɐpːeɾijɐːr], is a masonry gravity dam on the Periyar River of Idukki district of Indian state of Kerala. It is situated 150km south east of Kochi. It is located 881 m (2,890 ft) above the sea level, on the Cardamom Hills of the Western Ghats in Thekkady, Idukki District of Kerala, India. It was constructed between 1887 and 1895 by John Pennycuick and also reached in an agreement to divert water eastwards to the Madras Presidency area. It has a height of 53.6 m (176 ft) from the foundation, and a length of 365.7 m (1,200 ft). The Periyar National Park in Thekkady is located around the dam's reservoir. The dam is built at the confluence of Mullayar and Periyar rivers. The dam is located in Kerala on the river Periyar, but is operated and maintained by the neighbouring state of Tamil Nadu. Although the Periyar River has a total catchment area of 5398 km2 with 114 km2 downstream from the dam in Tamil Nadu, the catchment area of the Mullaperiyar Dam itself lies entirely in Kerala and thus not an inter-State river. On 21 November 2014, the water level hit 142 feet for first time in 35 years. The reservoir again hit the maximum limit of 142 feet on 15 August 2018, following incessant rains in the state of Kerala. In a UN report published in 2021, the dam was identified as one among the world's big dams which needs to be decommissioned for being 'situated in a seismically active area with significant structural flaws and poses risk to 3.5 million people if the 100+ years old dam were to fail'.
Tamil cinema, also known as Kollywood, is the segment of Indian cinema, dedicated to the production of motion pictures in the Tamil language widely spoken in the state of Tamil Nadu. It is nicknamed Kollywood, a portmanteau of the names Kodambakkam and Hollywood. The first Tamil silent film, Keechaka Vadham, was directed by R. Nataraja Mudaliar in 1918. The first Tamil talking feature film, Kalidas, a multilingual directed by H. M. Reddy was released on 31 October 1931, less than seven months after India's first talking motion picture Alam Ara.
Paraechinus is a genus of hedgehogs. Members are small and nocturnal. The genus contains four species from North Africa, the Middle East and South Asia:
The Consulate General of the Federal Republic of Germany in Chennai represents the interests of the German government in the Chennai and surrounding regions. The current Consul General is Karin Christina Maria Stoll incumbent since July 2018. She succeeds Achim Fabig.
The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to Tamil Nadu:
Cheruvat, Dinesan; Radhakrishnan, C. and Muhamed Jafer Palot. 2006. Handbook on Mammals of Kerala : 1–154. (Published by the Director, ZooL Surv. India, Kolkata)
Pradesh, U. (2016). Medicinal uses and trade of Madras HedgehogsParaechinus nudiventris in Tamil Nadu, India. Traffic Bulletin, 28(1), 7.
