Origin
Born in Münster Zoo on April 16, 2004, Klaudie has lived in Prague Zoo since July 14, 2006. She arrived along with another female, Katrin, who is a year younger. Both females spend their summers in a spacious two-and-a-quarter-hectare enclosure called “The African Savanna”. Here, both females live in peace and quiet side by side with other African herbivores – with Grévy’s zebras, lechwe, blesbok, Rothschild’s giraffes and, to give a different example, with ostriches. The visitor can thus enjoy the rare experience of watching herds of all kinds of animals graze on a vast sun-drenched plain, a sight that evokes the African savanna - hence the name.

Temperament
The eland antelope is the second-largest antelope in the world, right after the giant eland. And it is as if Klaudie is aware of that. She is big, strong and regal. At the same time, she is very inquisitive, a trait she demonstrated during a very peculiar sort of escape. Exploiting a moment’s inattention on the part of a keeper, she pushed through a gate that had not been properly shut and sauntered off to take a walk on the grassy area between the winter quarters and the giraffe yard. For a while, she just puttered around, at times stopping to investigate the electric motor that operates the gate in the corridor. At last, having evidently come to the conclusion that nothing of interest awaited her there, she leapt gracefully over the beams back into the corridor, eventually returning into the enclosure on her own. This should be no surprise, as it is well known that the eland antelope, despite its massive size, is an excellent jumper and does not even need a long run-up. Klaudie has a calm and composed disposition, which makes her a suitable occupant for the shared African enclosure. Her great virtue is that she is a low-maintenance animal. On the other hand, the troublesome thing about her is that when they move into the smaller winter quarters she is inconsiderate, at times even intolerant, towards her companion Katrin.

Breeding
In its modern history, Prague Zoo acquired its first eland antelopes in 2002. It is not our goal to breed them (the eland antelope is not an endangered species, nor is it a rare or demanding zoo inmate). We keep eland antelopes in our zoo mainly for display and educational purposes. We have only females, as keeping an adult stud male in a shared enclosure is not safe and indeed has not worked out well in the past.