A family trip to Karlštejn reminded me of an old mystery, closely related to this castle. First, I had fun trying to solve it by myself, later also with my two colleagues from Prague Zoo – Dr Ivan Rehák and Dr Jaroslav Šimek.

The covid-19 pandemic also adversely affected Prague Zoo in 2021. For the first 101 days of the year the zoo was completely closed, in the following weeks and months it was forced to come to terms with various restrictions and for a long time it had no foreign tourists. Thanks to the large interest from Czech visitors during the...

As if I would have anticipated it. In spite of it being a holiday and that we had been closed for weeks due to COVID, I set off on the morning of November 17, 2020, to the zoo. As soon as I arrived, I received a message that Mawar, the female of Sumatran orangutan, had started to give birth. Before half past eleven the baby was...

Just as with many of our other plans, the covid-19 pandemic complicated and delayed the pangolins’ arrival to Prague Zoo. But now we know we’ll be able to welcome them at the end of March, when a pair of Chinese pangolins (Manis pentadactyla) will arrive from Taipei Zoo: a female, Run Hou Tang, and a male, Gun Bao.

I spent my very first weekend as Prague Zoo’s director in the office. During that weekend I also wrote down ten points where I tried to define what our future approach to nature conservation projects for endangered species would be. These were and still are one of my priorities. Based on this document, we then started to...

Prior to my last trip to Cameroon, one of the things I noted was that we should find out more about African palm weevils and their production. I wrote about them here a while ago: almost as thick as a finger and sometimes two index finger phalanges long, the larvae of Rhynchophorus phoenicis are a popular delicacy in some...

During our trip to the Eastern Rhodopes, we received news that the restaurant we intended to visit was very well stocked. Although none of the pastoralists or any of the surrounding villages had any fallen livestock to give, the abundance of offal from the nearest abattoir was more than enough to replace them. I should point out...

For the first time in more than a year and a half, we visited Cameroon during the holidays. It was undoubtedly a rewarding trip, not least because at the end of it I signed a memorandum with the Cameroonian Minister of Forests and Fauna, Mr. Jules Ndoret Ndongo. This is a very significant step in the continued development of the...

It is not just one of the rarest and most beautiful terrapins in the world. On top of that, it's a terrapin with a story that has the makings of a Hollywood blockbuster: a shocking revelation, a desperate search, a spy hiding her true identity, intricate talks with superstitious villagers, tragedy, and a hint of a happy ending....