News

News
Zleva Konni, Granola and behind Victoria II. Photo: Miroslav Bobek, Prague Zoo

It was constantly below zero in Astana last week. However, it didn’t matter too much because we spent almost all our four-day-long stay there in meetings and negotiations.

Przewalski’s horses run through the landscape of their ancestors in the Great Gobi B Strictly Protected Area in Mongolia. Such a sight will soon be a reality on the Altyn Dala steppe in central Kazakhstan. Photo Miroslav Bobek, Prague Zoo

The first transports of Przewalski’s horses from Europe to Kazakhstan will take place this June in the framework of the project entitled Return of the Wild Horses 2024. 

Photo: Miroslav Bobek, Prague Zoo

I met the Zoos Victoria Director Dr Jenny Gray after almost two years. In the administration building of Melbourne Zoo we talked about what had happened during that time. “And most importantly, after ten years of fruitless searching we found Victorian dragon. It went unobserved for fifty-four years and many considered it...

Foto: Miroslav Bobek, Zoo Praha

Today, on Saturday, February 10, we published the name of the gorilla female, born in Prague Zoo at the very beginning of this year. Sure, I will write it at the end of this text, but first about selecting the name. In fact, this time we proceeded in a completely unconventional way. We asked the children from Cameroonian town...

Šiška, the first pangolin bred in Europe, is one year old and is thriving. She loves feeding on the special nutritious mash made from bee larvae and climbing through the branches in her exhibit. Photo Oliver Le Que, Prague Zoo

Today the first pangolin pup bred in Europe is turning one. Šiška (=pine cone in Czech), the female Chinese pangolin, is doing well weighing over 3 kilograms and eating roughly two-thirds of her parents' food portion every day. Prague Zoo has prepared a special birthday programme for the upcoming weekend.

Pýchavka before the first large veterinary intervention last autumn. Photo Miroslav Bobek

I started calling her Pýchavka (Puffball). Pýchavka with y, although for a spiny animal, Píchavka would be more suggestive. (Píchavka is derived from the verb píchat, which means to prickle in English). But in the first video taken by the camera her spines were hardly noticeable, and she really reminded me more of a...

Two big news items of the past year appear for the first time only in this summary: as the only one breeding facility outside of Brazil we obtained the rarest duck of the world – Brazilian merganser – and we succeeded to breed short-beaked echidna. However, the year 2023 was above all the year of the first pangolin bred in...

The capybara in the yuzu bath in the picture, which also appeared on the official Twitter profile of the Japanese government in December 2021.

You wanted them, so you will have them. Capybaras are coming back to Prague Zoo. Probably the most popular animals in the world at the moment. At least in the world of social networks, where they appear in countless memes with huge numbers of shares.

A female mountain bongo Pipi immediately after recovering from her injury. Photo: Miroslav Bobek, Prague Zoo

In mid-August I wrote here about a young mountain bongo female from our zoo, who lost her mother but showed a tremendous will to live. Thanks to her connection with the herd, she began to drink from two other females, who were caring for their own young, which, together with artificial supplemental feeding was sufficient for her...

The Cuban iguana male Pepíno is kept in shape by the presence of another male in the neighbouring terrarium. Photo: Miroslav Bobek

When I wrote last week about the aardvark female Pieta, who became the oldest representative of her species in the world, also the oldest historically, I should not forget some other representatives of the oldest animals also living in our zoo.