Director´s view

My notes this year include a very long list of newly discovered animal species and other events in zoology that are significant or at least remarkable. Sarah Woodfin and the Annamite striped rabbit are among the top items on my list. I was very pleased by the fact that this student has managed to document such an interesting animal!

The negotiations and preparations took three years. On Wednesday afternoon, on the Czech Statehood Day, as a matter of coincidence, I received news from Gujarat at last, finally confirming the date of departure of the three Indian lions from the Sakkarbaug Zoo to Prague. I heaved a sigh of relief – and simultaneously prayed...

It is said that when in the end of 1950s workers discovered in one of Prague gardens a strange statue with animal features under a drift of leaves and soil the authorities did not know what to do with it. So they offered it to the zoological garden.

There is always something to discover. Also in a zoo. When I asked Pavel Krásenský, zoologist and photographer to document the lives of insects in our Zoo, I hoped that he would discover something interesting. But reality exceeded expectations.

In my diary, I have a note from a Monday, July 13 meeting with our zookeepers. The note is about Kvída, our aardvark female, and it reads: “may give birth sooner”. We expected something like that based on her ultrasound exam results. But she managed to surprise us anyway and brought her baby into the world as early as early...

I was in the zoo for less than a week when young male orangutan Pagy swung on an overgrown branch and got into the visitors' space in the Indonesian Jungle pavilion. During a panic attempt to return he fell into the water moat and there is no doubt that it was only the quick action of his keeper that saved him from drowning.

Just now I have read that in this heat human hair heat up to 57°C and inside of a car even after a "mild airing out" the temperature can be 55°C.

One week ago, when after a rather difficult transport from Dolní Dobřejov, we released four mares of Przewalski´s Horse to the acclimatization enclosure in Gobi, we felt we could finally take a rest. Finished, done. But for Querida, Rabea, Kíra and Paradise this moment is only the beginning of their new life in the habitat,...

Done for the fifth time, it should have been routine - but transporting wild horses across a quarter of the globe is never a routine. Again we had to face expected and unexpected problems.