Director´s view

Director´s view
Director´s view
Photo: Miroslav Bobek

On Monday, the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress permanently banned the trade and consumption of wild animals. This decision came on the heels of a temporary ban this January. It was made on the day 79,524 people were confirmed to be infected with coronavirus 2019-nCoV and the number of deaths had risen to...

Photo: Simon Song, South China Morning Post

I know many people willing to argue passionately that the current Wuhan coronavirus infection originates from a military laboratory. But there’s not a single shred of evidence to support this. On the contrary, even though it was first suspected to have come from snakes, the primary source of the coronavirus infection was bats....

When we started the collection to help the Australian fauna on Monday, January 6th, I expected it to take in the order of tens of thousands of crowns. That is why two and a half days later, I couldn't believe my eyes when I looked at the bank statement. It had CZK 876,000! Almost a million! And then my head just kept spinning...

Photo: Khalil Baalbaki

Years ago, we got a beautiful fir tree for Christmas. It wasn’t until the tumult of Christmas afternoon that it was lamentably revealed that the tree’s diameter greatly exceeded the diameter of the stand and we had no tool at home to whittle down the trunk. The problem was finally resolved by a machete borrowed from the...

Photo: Khalil Baalbaki

Tying in with this year’s 65th anniversary of the arrival of the first giraffe in Prague Zoo, I posted a small note on social networks as a reminder. The text of the note was originally published in National Policy in 1937. That means it was written seventeen years before the Masai Giraffe named Lenka ended her long journey...

Placing of vultures on an artificial nest in eastern Rhodopes in August 2018. Photo: Sabina Rašková, Prague Zoo

Last year in June Anna, a female Egyptian vulture, was hatched in our zoo. In August, she and another young vulture were transported to the eastern Rhodope Mountains. There, the Bulgarian conservationists placed them in an artificial nest on a high rock cliff to get used to living in freedom. After three weeks, Anna left this...

Photo: Petr Hamerník, Prague Zoo

There is exactly one week until the opening of the Rákos’ House with its exhibits of rare parrot species. Seven more days and it will be here. Finally!

Photo: Miroslav Bobek, Prague Zoo

Today is International Vulture Awareness Day. This was foreshadowed by the news on Tuesday that a female Egyptian Vulture, which had been hatched at Zlín Zoo and placed in an artificial nest in the Bulgarian mountains at the beginning of August, had passed away. She flew into some power lines on her very...

Photo: Petr Velenský, Prague Zoo

The entire genome of the world’s largest lizard, the Komodo dragon, is now available at the US National Center for Biotechnology Information under access number SJPD00000000. An article on how it was read and analyzed was published in the August issue of Nature Ecology & Evolution by a thirty-member scientific team,...

John Singleton Copley’s famous painting “Watson and the Shark”. National Gallery of Art, Washington, D. C.

So far there hasn’t been a repeat of the Czech teacher attacked by a shark in the Adriatic. However, sharks are once again circling the media waters in abundance. Just as it was last year, two years ago, or, for that matter, twenty years ago, the threat they pose to holidaymakers at seaside resorts is once again being...