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Dave Schaap with “Mr Sumac” in Cressy. Photo: Miroslav Bobek, Prague Zoo

In a few days, it will be half a year since Dave Schaap sent me a photo from Tasmania’s Hobart Airport. It was of a concrete runway with two carts in the foreground. A sign above one of them – with four wooden crates – read: Ready to load. “At last!” I cried out in joy.

Next Saturday we’ll open Prague Zoo’s newly built exhibition, dedicated to Tasmania and Australia. When the architects designed it, they were inspired by the fact that we had chosen its location at the bottom of a slope that is crowned by an artistic rendition of a meteorite. They did some research and discovered that...

Photo: Miroslav Bobek, Prague Zoo

Eight days ago, last Friday night, we published a video taken by our keeper Irek Dabrowski. It captured the highly pregnant elephant Janita with a swollen belly, which clearly showed the baby elephant moving inside.

Photo: Miroslav Bobek, Zoo Praha

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Wet market in Laos. Photo: Miroslav Bobek

Six months ago, if you were to tell people there would be a pandemic that would spread from one of China’s many wet markets and paralyse the world, most people would consider it to have been the unlikely plot of a disaster movie. In reality, however, something similar could have been expected.

A still from a video about enrichment for orangutans. Author:  Vendula Hejná

I walked through the open turnstiles into the empty zoo, whereupon I stopped and turned back. Then, suddenly, I pulled out my mobile and began to take a video of the entrance to the closed zoo.

The female elephant as pictured this Wednesday. Photo by Petr Hamerník, Prague Zoo

It’s a shame I can't invite you to the zoo this Sunday. Our youngest baby elephant, a ten-day-old female, will venture out for the first time. That’s if the weather is good. But there’s nothing to be done about it. Unfortunately, you will not see her with your own eyes and I’m more or less in the same boat as you. I also...

A baby Asian elephant was born in Prague Zoo. Photo: Petr Hamerník, Prague Zoo

In the early hours of Friday morning an Asian elephant came into the world at Prague Zoo. It is a female and weighs 92 kilograms. She and her mother Tamara are both well. The elephant’s father is Ankhor. Prague Zoo is expecting the birth of a second baby, the female Janita is also pregnant.

One of the most successful videos is that of the gorilla family, especially Richard. Photo: Miroslav Bobek, Prague Zoo

The short videos published on social networks by Prague Zoo’s employees, headed by the director, have received great feedback from the Zoo’s visitors and supporters. The brief videos, shot by mobile phones only, capture different aspects of life in a zoo that is closed to the public. Naturally, they mainly concern animals...

Success for Prague Zoo – rearing Javan green magpies using an adoption by parents method. Photo: Petr Hamerník, Prague Zoo

On Tuesday, February 4, a chick from one of the rarest birds in the world, the Javan green magpie (Cissa thalassina), hatched at Prague Zoo. Although they are experienced parents, they have destroyed several of their previous clutches and even killed their offspring. Javan greens are very sensitive birds and even a slight...