@FunkyGibbon Do you mean the large number of zoos in the Czech Republic, versus the much smaller number in Slovakia? I’d always just attributed this to the relative wealth of the Czech Republic, and the lesser number of big cities in Slovakia.
Yes exactly. I suppose one reason that it surprises me a little is that as a Communist country you would have expected Czechoslovakia to do a little wealth distribution and build zoos in all areas.
So far as I know, pretty much all the zoos in CZ and SK are modern, ie 20th century; but all except some very recent ones were created when the country was unified as Czechoslovakia, pre and post the second world war. The larger cities and wealth was/were always in the west and this is where the State built its zoos, as controlled entertainment for its 'citizens'. I hope someone more informed can give us an insight into the zoo as a tool in the control of the populous behind the iron curtain...
So I asked some competent persons about this, so here are their answers with some added context:
As you've rightly argued, the main reason is certainly that Czechia was lightyears in front of Slovakia in terms of development. This goes all the way back to the Austro-Hungarian empire when Bohemia was pretty much the industrial center of the whole empire, whilst Slovakia was just a Hungarian expat, used mainly as big pasture for sheep.
Now jumping ahead a bit as the era around WWI and WWII isn't really important, when Communist era started the "Planned economy" came with it. There was this thing called "Central planning office" that was responsible for planning (surprising, I know) all the developments and sort of erasing the differences between two very different regions. So as @FunkyGibbon says, the wealth distribution was there, but in a way of "give each country what they need most" and Slovakia heavily lacked infrastructure and industries...
@sooty mangabey 's point about big cities would get us back to the money issue as there are enough bigger cities in Slovakia that never had something resembling zoo (Banska Bystrica, Nitra, Martin,...) whilst almost every city in Czechia above 50 000 inhabitants have/had a zoo or similar institution at some point in their history.
This also brings me to the last (my sort of personal view) argument about the disproportion: Czech's are and always were super into animal keeping and the attitude of the general public is very positive and basically every newly emerged zoo has guaranteed tens of thousands of visitors annually almost without having to try...but in Slovakia the feeling looks like it's much different. Bratislava was twice in its history partly destroyed by the construction of highway, Spišsská Nová Ves is still existing only because of heroic work few individuals, Košice can't really develop because there are landowner issues...it will be interesting to see which way will these go in the future.
