The Carnival of the Animals on 2 April at the home of Pauline Viardot with an audience including Franz Liszt, a friend of the composer, who had expressed a wish to hear the work. There were other private performances, typically for the French mid-Lent festival of , but Saint-Saëns was adamant that the work would not be published in his lifetime, seeing it as detracting from his "serious" composer image. He relented only for the famous cello solo "The Swan", which forms the penultimate movement of the work, and which was published in 1887 in an arrangement by the composer for cello and solo piano
People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals with PETA India include Shahid Kapoor, Hema Malini, and Raveena Tandon, among many others. PETA India is affiliated with Animal Rahat ("Rahat" means "relief"), a nonprofit organization that "was created to make a difference in the lives of working bullocks, donkeys, ponies, horses, and other animals." It's located in the sugar-mill district of Sangli, India, and is dedicated to providing "free aid to bullocks who work in sugar mills, donkeys who are used in the brick kilns, horses who pull carts, and other working animals" as well as helping "animals' owners, who are often too poor to afford the sustenance