Breeding pair of Silvery gibbons (Flip and Alang-Alang) has a young born few days ago. Greater flamingos have only 2 chicks. And it seems they have already abandoned their nests, even with eggs (dummies) still in. The mixed colony of Caribbean, Chilean and hybrid flamingos has 5 chicks. Probably 3 of them Caribbean and 2 Chilean, but it´s hard to tell yet, some could be hybrids too. It is rather depressing sight of flamingo enclosures in this zoo. Overgrown with unkept vegetation, it looks more like dark jungle than enclosures for sun-loving birds. Some chicks in last years had to be put down due to bad malformation of their legs (wrong nutrition). Very many adult birds have bad feet, worse than other zoos I visit. And it has been over decade when the zoo was able to produce +20 parent-readed chicks annually. The current bird curator either lacks interest or knowledge, at least it seems so. Prague zoo owns the very last breeding-sized group of Chileans in the Czech republic and it would be shame to slowly lose it, due to neglect.
List of newly acquired and bred animals from July is out: Notable breedings - 1 Tayra, 1 Red Panda, 1 White-striped Dorcopsis, 1 Malagasy giant rat, 4x Indian star tortoise, 1 Rufous-cheeked laughingthrush, 1 Himalayan tahr, 1 Quince monitor, 1 Helmeted curassow, 2x Crested Duck, 1 Bush stone-curlew, 4x Texas Tortoise, 3x Dwarf mongoose, 2x Chacoan mara, 8x Cuban ground iguana, 2x Purple-naped Lory and 3 flamingos. New animal is male Fishing cat from Port Lympne and male Cape Barren goose from Jihlava. Two Egyptian vulture chicks were sent to Bulgaria and released to the wild. Some abandoned Greater flamingo eggs hatched and 6 chicks are hand-reared. The new parrot house still has no opening date scheduled/announced.
I really hope they wouldn´t be waiting til Tasmania will be open (Tasmania should be completed within one year, but taking into account Rákos pavilon construction I am pretty scared )
Zoo announced that they won't be obtaining pandas. The exhibit will probably still be buildt though, instead of pandas, zoo might go for sloth bears.
I personally would prefer Malayan bears here, their situation in Europe is in dire need of additional capacity.
It's total speculation until we know something about why the pandas aren't coming, but purely based on the fact that they aren't I'd bet pretty hard on the monkeys also no making it. If they keep the development Chinese themed then I'd go for Asiatic Black Bears myself.
According to Zoo director's statement the reason is pretty simple: Our president didn't officialy requested the pandas from China. Also he talks about other countries "overtaking" us in panda-obtaining process and that new council of Prague isn't really in favor of the idea having pandas here. Throughout the statement there is no word on the fate of monkeys.
Yeah, some parts of that statement really sounds like he's trying to hide how much is he really fed up about this
If Prague has pulled out of the panda process I think it's very likely they won't get the monkeys. However, we certainly don't know at this point.
I don't want to speculate to much about it but I think that monkeys and pandas were actually discussed as two independent deals, but we'll see. I tried to ask director on his Twitter but so far, he didn't respond. But the same question is already being asked by someone on his Facebook page, so maybe we'll find out soon enough.
