Director´s view

On Sunday we named both our baby elephants. The daughters of Tamara and Janita, our Prague elephant princesses. I’d like to remind you that the first was born on March 27th, when the zoo had been closed for a fortnight, and the second on May 9th, when it had been reopened, but many restrictions still applied. Of course, right...

Yes, I’ve decided to build a hotel. An insect hotel. In the zoo we have a lot of insect hotels and inns, but now – as I’m writing this chapter – I’m going to build one with my own hands and place it in the garden of our cottage. So before leaving for the weekend I’m gathering material and tools. Also, I must not...

It was before “corona”. While on holiday in Palolem, in the Indian state of Goa, we went for a walk along the beach after dinner. Fish and seafood vendors had set up simple stalls. I photographed some northern red snappers and several barracudas, and then I was surprised to see that two sharks barely forty centimetres long...

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...

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.

.--. .-. .- --. ..- . / --.. --- --- / .-- --- ..- .-.. -.. / .-.. .. -.- . / - --- / .- -. -. --- ..- -. -.-. . 
and so on.

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.

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.