Bear cooling down in the Bratislava ZOO (source: SITA)
BRATISLAVA Zoo’s summer season has begun; it will last until the end of October.
“This year the winter was long, but since April the weather has been fine so we have all been very busy improving the premises,” Silvia Pirošková, the zoo’s head of education and promotion, told the SITA newswire. “All the zoo’s employees have been cleaning the pens, visitor areas, planting shrubs and installing things like branches, tree stumps, ropes, and sand,” Pirošková added.
The aviaries have been prepared for the return of the birds, which spend the winter in special quarters. There is also now a place for attractions like a rodeo bull and pony rides for children.
The zoo also has some new animals, including a new species of pheasant, cottontop tamarins, two male orangutans from Prague Zoo and a pair of chimpanzees for the new Great Apes Pavilion that will open to the public in spring 2010, Pirošková said. In addition, two female African Wild Dogs should arrive from Dvůr Králové nad Labem Zoo; and some individuals will be added to make up pairs – specifically, parrots, Eurasian Eagle Owls and Pygmy Marmosets. “We are exchanging some animals with other zoos, or exporting them. With Zlín Zoo we will exchange female Bactrian (two-humped) Camels and male Pere David's Deer (also known as Milu),” she added.
Some redundant tamarins and Addax – also known as screwhorn antelope – will be sold, as well as Vietnamese pigs and a male group of Blackbuck antelopes. Several babies have been born since the beginning of this year, e.g. Pygmy goats, Chapmann’s Zebra and European Bison.
Several events are being organised during the year, for instance on May 30 there will be Children’s Day, then weekends with educational feeding, the European Night of Bats in September, the Zoo in the Sky event, World Animals’ Day in October, and St. Nicholas’ – or Mikuláš – Day in December.
