I fully agree that large hornbills get handled in stepmotherly way by Prague. Especially ruffous hornbills - when the group got first imported (from Philliphines?) and placed in a pheasantry aviary (in part where today lies walk-through kangaroo pen) I hoped the zoo would build for them a nice spacious aviary somewhere. But when their cage got demolished and they got squized into even smaller aviary within pheasantly, I was like - it is just temporary, right. Right? Nope, they sit there for years and I ´ve not heard about any relocation / construction plans for them. Myself, I would build for them on the meadow behind sea eagles - calm place under mature trees.
I have also no current info about what the zoo plans with the old closed elephant house. Manatees got shelved due to projected costs (and that made me unhappy because it included also planned harpy eagle aviaries and I wished to have this species back so much). The current lowland tapir is repurposed white rhino paddock. Current capybara / anteater paddock is former nile hippo outside yard. The small terrarium behind bororo got built inside a viewing galery of the elephant house in 1980s and homehow survived till today, but is on borrowed time. Thise whole area needs to be rebuilt asap.
The European pond turtle basin in front of gharial house was built originally for gharials. They used it when they were small but with growing size they were not willing to go there anymore so it got repurposed. I have heard tentative plans to build a shed/greenhouse over the basin and use it for other reptiles but dont know how realistic it is.
I see you skipped the silvery gibbon house and island. It is placed just next to Greater flamingos, but on the opposite side of the flamingo pen that you walked by. (the construction site you saw is for a new capuchin house) The all-glass gibbon house was originaly built for flamingos and shoebill storks - you can clearly see it´s devided in half inside. But then the former zoo director Fejk (idea creator of the whole "water world") and former bird curator butted heads about the house. The bird curator wanted to build adjoined aviaries for the freshly arrived shoebills. He refused to pinion them and place them on the open-top island, he dreamed of breeding them one day. The director alsolutely refused to build standard bird aviaries within the water world, he hated aviaries (and especially the existing pheasantry) with passion - the only aviary type he was fond of was a large mixed-species walkthrough, but there was not enough space for it. None of them relented. So the newly built house sat empty till it got repurposed for primates at the end.
The Sichuan pavilion used to be a little nicer, but got completely re-planted few years back and I dont like the current planting as much as I liked the original one. Other visitors seem to have similar opinion and it might be reason you have not enjoyed this exhibit too much. (sidenote - the Sichuan house was originaly built in 1950s and was a waterfowl house. It housed among others Andean flamingos, waders or various penguins, devided from visitors by just knee-high walls. Then it was in desolated state and closed for over a decade, before it got rebuilt into current Sichuan in 2004).
Existence of just 1 bear species per zoo, just like xmoose said, is the new standard in Czechia. While in 20th century, any large self-respecting local zoos would keep at least 2-4 bear species, there was an abrupt phase-out in 1990s due to public criticism of poor holding conditions. And due to limited funds zoos could upgrade exhibit for max 1 species so gave up others. When Prague was hit by 2002 flood, its vet had to pts their last brown bear (it was deemed not rescuable due to lack of transport boxes and quickly rising waterlevel inside cat house) while American black bears were locked backstage to use their outside pen temporarily to warehouse other rescued animals. It shows that Prague kept 3 bear species as recently as 2002.
Lack of any rhinos is something that also just so happened. Prague´s last rhinos - an old white rhino pair, got sent elsewhere in 2002. Whites were planned for giraffe house but it got shelved. Then there was plan to build stables and a pen above savannah, but that got shelved too. Current plan is for indian rhinos (would be first appearance of the species ever in Prague) to replace bisons and camels.
Prague has an unbalanced collection that sometimes reflects prefferences of its (former) curators that got a free hand at acquiring species. 5 porcupine species on one hand, no tamarins or marmosets on the other. More laughtingtrushes that you can remmember, big fat zero of marine fish. Three flamingo species is something I rejoice (I LOVE flamingos), unfortunately current curator is not into them and doesnt care if they breed at all or if they produce hybrids (and dont start me on that overgrown and neglected American flamingo pen itself). The current crane paddocks were originaly intended also for flamingos but that transfer (to split mixed flock of Chileans and Caribbeans and move the latter there) never materialised.
RE offshow collection. I find it strange that the zoo should keep 150 vertebrate species offshow, my guess would be lower. When the zoo finaly publishes its 2023 inventory, I´ll double check ZTL for "dead bodies".
But yes, the zoo has quite some holding capacity backstage - important reason is to be able to keep more individuals of the same species than what fits into public exhibits. When you see long row of small cages in pheasantry, what you dont see is a symetrical row of cages just on the opposite side of the long shed (I dont want to call it a house, that would be too generous). When you go through ibis aviaries, the waterfowl house on backround also has a row of narrow cages on the opposite side. Behind penguins is hidden a breeding center for birds of prey, large parrots, birds-of-paradise and trogons. Farm "statek" has not only bts Cuban crocs but should have also a collection of small rodents, rooms for aardvarks and some other species, next to a vet clinic. On your righ side, when you come near to giraffes, is another bts house with dozens universal cages for middle-sized mammals. Indonesian house hosts several bts tanks for large water turtles. Sichuan house has few small aviaries hidden behind the inside wall. Tortoise house has a bts section with various reptile tanks. Salamander house keeps another 8-10 giant salamanders bts. Gharial house has bts rooms and tanks. Méfou (gorilla house) has several bts small rooms and outside cages suitable for small primates. Big cat house has hidden (small) rooms and yards. And I probably forgot more spaces like this. It gives the zoo great deal of flexibility to move animals around and never leave even a single exhibit empty for more than a few days.
At the end I wanted to write my overall view of the zoo, but it got lenghty so here a TLDR version. Prague zoo has a long line of weaknesses and issues. It can´t be compared with giants of San Diego or Zürich-caliber. But it´s a nice day out and worth your visit.
I noticed that meadow behind the sea eagles, after mistakenly assuming there would be more aviaries back there, and thought it is a must-use for future Pheasantry expansion. A hornbill aviary similar in size to the Great Aviary, perhaps with a similar open-fronted viewing, would be an excellent addition to Prague in my opinion.
I did try looking for the gibbons, but, perhaps among the panic of time constraints, failed to find them, and with a small area near the sitatunga fenced off for construction work during my visit, I suspected that this was why. I see now that I was wrong and missed the gibbons, but any idea what this could have been? As a side-note, I think it is quite a shame that if Fejk didn’t like the Pheasantry either, it didn’t cross his mind to have it demolished, or at the very least improved upon somewhat. Must say, that I find myself in agreement with him about the concept of the pheasantry having some inherent flaws, and large walkthroughs being far better, but in my eyes no more or less flawed than the many pinioned waterfowl in open-topped exhibits seen throughout Water World.
It hadn’t even occurred to me that callitrichids and marine fish are completely absent, but it is odd indeed for one of the biggest collections in Europe. Shame about the flamingo hybridisation, which seems fairly irresponsible to me.
I suspect that between unsigned fish in pools throughout the zoo, species that I missed (like you say, the gibbons) and domestics (which I didn’t count), the total offshow species is probably a lot lower than 150 despite my relatively low count of just 488 onshow. I would estimate around 70-80, which does seem plausible based on the high number of offshow species that you mention. I must say that I am quite surprised there are any offshow areas in Méfou, which, as I was entering Prague by bike and passing the zoo, I assumed was the salamander or Gharial house, as I couldn’t see it being big enough for a gorilla house, never mind gorillas, hyraxes and offshow primates!
And, as a further aside Jana, I would like to thank you for your many interesting facts that you have shared throughout this thread, which have definitely brought a new layer of interest to this thread.
I was going to say this sooner but I feel like Prague zoo has a lot of missed opportunities to incorporate mixing birds with other exhibits (Darwin Crater is an exception). Gobi could have displayed birds of prey, as Jana mentioned in the news thread, such as saker falcons and golden eagles. While I don’t see many problems with Dja Reserve, being an outsider who just visited the zoo months before its opening, I do think it’s odd that the exhibit doesn’t have any birds such as hornbills, turacos, and passerines. And there’s also the unfortunate cancellation of the seabird aviary for the arctic area. The fact that the entire Africa area doesn’t have a memorable aviary doesn’t help either.
Gobi I am less irritated by, as there isn’t too much space and I much prefer the rodents and Pallas’ cats (and even the reptiles, given how rare they are, despite them not really being my interest). However, I certainly agree that the lack of any birds in Dja is odd, as is Elephant Valley, African Savannah and some older exhibits. You say that the Africa area has no memorable aviaries, but that could easily be expanded to no aviaries at all!
Regarding the Lord Howe stick insects, the EEP is set to be switched from Bristol to either London or Prague.
With both collections set to acquire the species (from Melbourne) whether or not they become the new EEP coordinator.
@xmoose when you say that the plans were for stick insects to go onshow between Darwin Crater and giant anteaters, do you mean in the Terrarium or in a specially constructed new exhibit? The latter would be excellent, but I suspect the former would make more sense.
Even after many years I still get excited whenever I see it awake.
No other Czech zoos, sadly, but I did visit Zoo Dresden and Tierpark Dessau, as well as the very small Tierpark Wittenberg, all in Germany. This is because the journey that brought me to Prague was a cycle trip down the River Elbe (joining the Vltava in Melnik to get to Prague) starting in Magdeburg.
Massive building with huge potential and poor execution.
