Director´s view

Director´s view
Director´s view
Przewalski’s Horses. Photo: Miroslav Bobek, Prague Zoo

“200 km straight, then a mild curve to the left, again 200 km straight, right turn and after another 50 km we will stop for the night,” I wrote home with only a little exaggeration when we were heading by cars to the “Golden Steppe” Altyn Dala after the afternoon flight to Kostanay in northern Kazakhstan. The following...

Photo: Miroslav Bobek

It was an unbelievable paradox. During my journey to Cameroon, I received news about the progress of the pangolin female Šiška and at the same time I was daily seeing pangolins in street stalls and on markets or cooked in local restaurants… Pangolins have been strictly protected in Cameroon for many years, however the trade...

Šiška, Photo: Miroslav Bobek, Prague Zoo

For many years I had a wish, which I rather did not want to tell anybody about. It seemed so immodest and unrealistic to me.

Picture: Colonel Zelinka perfectly captured the look and functioning of Prague Zoo in the 1930s. Petr, the hippo, is depicted here with the keeper in the original house of pachyderms, which used to be at the place of today’s lemur exhibit. The headquarters of the zoo are in the background. Source: the collections of the Austrian Film Museum

Thirteen films, which found their way to us from the Austrian Film Museum, provided us with a great deal of information about the look and functioning of Prague Zoo in the 1930s. Even more exciting is the discovery that there probably were – or still are – many more of these films. Perhaps up to twenty-one! We know that...

Red-legged Golden Orb-web Spider in new gorilla house — Dja Reserve, Photo: Petr Hamerník

It was a bit of a provocation from me. I let people vote on Twitter on whether to release nephilas in the jungle in our new gorilla house – The Dja Reserve. What an idea! Although the voting ended in a tie, otherwise reasonable people were writing angry posts in the discussion about toxicity of these spiders or neurotoxicity...

Source: Pixabay

Last year around Christmas the prominent Lugash ethnographer Charles Litton stayed in Czech Republic. Now I have received a draft of his scientific paper, which he titled “Christmas Fish: Tradition and Rituals in Czech Republic (Eastern Europe)”. Of course, I will remind him again that we are located in Central Europe, and I...

The obvious difference between the red panda and the giant panda: The first of them has a long furry tail, while the other one is completely missing this feature.

If somebody says that the red panda is a mysterious animal, I will agree. For instance, already for almost two centuries the proper classification of this carnivore has been debated. Today it is clear, that for sure it is not related to giant panda, but I will get to that later.

A digital recontruction of a humback whale trap feeding. Credit J. McCarthy

Monsters and weird creatures from ancient legends and old bestiaries often are not just pure figments of the imagination but tend to have their real prototypes. As it has recently transpired this is also true about the sea monster, referred to as hafgufa in Norse sagas and manuscripts. Nevertheless, its mystery has been...

Ing. Josef Zelinka still in the rank of lieutenant colonel in his residence at Salvátorská Street 7. Source: Austrian Film Museum

Thirteen film reels with almost five hours of footage, which is extremely valuable for us in Prague Zoo as well as for military historians. After a complicated investigation we managed to find their author. It was Col. Eng. Josef Zelinka.

The author of the films was this Czechoslovak army officer. He was the mysterious "Mr. Zet" for us for a long time. Source: Collection of the Austrian Film Museum

I haven’t experienced such a well-attended press conference as on Thursday, February 23, in Prague Zoo, for a long time. We held it because of recently discovered films that captured our zoological garden in the early years of its existence. We wanted to identify the author of the films – an officer of the Czechoslovak Army...