Could it be fresh salmon? Cindy and her brother Ťapík celebrate their ninth birthday. (source: TASR)
KOŠICE Zoo has chosen a winning blueprint for reconstruction and new use of Košice’s Old Indoor Pool which will soon become part of a new Water World (Vodný svet) at the zoo complex. The design was prepared by the team of Juraj Furdík, Ivor Mečiar, Peter Lovich and Kristína Šťastná, and not only preserves the original purpose of the pool, for people, but combines it with another, detached water world for zoo animals. The jury evaluated 18 proposals altogether but chose the winning plan because it keeps the existing building and its original use while adding an entirely new element.
Košice Zoo also baked a big birthday cake in January to honour its bear quintuplets, born nine years ago. The quints are listed in the Guinness Book of Records because it is unusual for five bear cubs to be born at once and nearly a miracle when they all survive.
Two of the quints, Cindy and her brother Ťapík, enjoyed the cake but another of the quints, Mišo, and the other bears at the zoo were still in their winter hibernation and the zoo tenders chose not to wake them up. Two others of the quintuplets, Bubu and Dazzle, were moved last year to a luxury breeding facility at Ranč Větrov near the Czech city of Tábor. “We think they will have better conditions there but we continue to monitor their physical and mental state,” Erich Kočner, the zoo's head, told the SITA newswire.
"Two Pygmy Cameroon goats as well as one Cameroon lamb were born at the zoo on the last day of January," Eva Malešová of the zoo’s promotion and culture department told the TASR newswire. The zoo recorded more than 142,000 visitors in 2010, SITA wrote. The public’s increased interest has also been reflected in the number of ‘adopted’ animals, which in the zoo’s case means a person or organisation financially contributing to a chosen animal and then being kept informed about its well-being.
In January Košice Zoo also became a member of International Zoo Educators (IZE), an association that provides zoos with up-to-date information and technologies for educational purposes. Kočner said the association particularly supports the use of live exhibits as a modern form of environmental education.
