ZOO Plzeň Plzen zoo news

Two lion cubs left for France - 2 years old Barbary lion male Baqir is going to Les Sables 16 months old female Esma Luisa is going to Doué la Fontaine

 

First day of a new year couldn't get any better in Plzen. 0,1 Chimpanzee was born. It's first baby after 13 years.

 

Great news! I wish the newborn all the best.

 

Just a slight correction, it's the first chimp born after 17 years.

 

There were definitely more young chimps born in that time frame in Plzen and Ostrava, however none managed to survive.

 

The central subspecies troglodytes!

 

I thought the zoo had some hybrids as well as troglodytes?

~Thylo

 

Certainly, there were twins born in Plzen cca two years ago, but they were born prematurely and didn't survive.

The zoo has currently male who is troglodytes, adult 0,2 hybrid, and adult 0,2 troglodytes

The baby was (as I've mentioned in the "Chimps in Europe" thread) born to one of the hybrid female. So it's 75% troglodytes (father of the female was pure troglodytes) which is still good enough for the breeding program.

The twins I mentioned earlier in my post would be 100% troglodytes though, which makes their loss even sadder.

 

Are there some plans with chimps home? It really doesn´t seems appropriate to me... and since they obviously want them breed...

 

There are some rough ideas, but more or less unspecific as most of the effort now goes to the Elephant house. In the meantime the primate keepers team does all they can to improve the conditions as much as possible.

 

Mother of the newborn chimp Zedonja - born 1994 at Burgers.
Father is Bask - born 1983 at Dvur Kralove

 

1,1 Western tree hyrax are now on display in Nocturnal house.

 

2019 annual report is now online on Plzen's website.

 

The zoo has presented its two youngest lemur cubs. One is Alaotra bamboo lemur born in April and the second one is a Brown lemur born in May. Both are probably males.

 

• Emin's pouched rats are back on-show after brief pause. 2 of them live with fruit bats and brush-tailed porcupines in the nocturnal house.

• The exhibits around Madagascar and Nocturnal houses are planned to be reworked - from current islands with water moats to netted aviaries/cages. Step back exhibitry-wise, but it might make the animal husbandry better actually. This will also allow the construction of outdoor exhibit for aardvarks.

• 3 new aquariums in the Underground world are finally finished - housing 2 species of Bichir, Alligator Gar, and Lungfish.

• Next to the Underground world, a new exhibit is constructed - Asian themed canopy (or something similar) with aquariums.

• Eastern green mambas (Dendroaspis angusticeps) laid 9 eggs, 5 of them already hatch and they expect the remaining 4 to hatch successfully as well.

• Both zoo and city council are still hopeful that the Elephant house will still happen, they are in closing stages of preparing project documentation, but securing funds will be the issue as the quoted sum is absolutely massive (member of the city council said in an interview that the expected total is "almost 1 billion CZK/ cca 37 millions €)

 

I plan to go to the zoo at the beginning of July. Are the houses open? Thanks in advance

 

Yes, houses are open, but wearing face masks in them is recommended.

 

Thanks a lot

 

On my visit today I noticed two new unsigned passerine species - at least two Pine grosbeaks in the DinoPark aviaries, and at least one Common reed bunting in the aviaries close to the lion-tailed macaques. Definitely the pine grosbeaks were a really nice surprise!

I was also happy to note quite a few juveniles of red crossbills and horned larks in their respective aviaries, fun to see captive breeding with those rare birds.

Overstocking in the smaller bird aviaries generally also felt a lot less bad than in 2017, with a few species gone or lower in number.