Director´s view

“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...

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...

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.

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...

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...

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...

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.

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...

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.