Do you happen to know that Prague Zoo is acknowledged to be the best zoo in continental Europe? We decided to verify this popular statement through visiting the zoo three weeks ago during our trip to Czech Republic.
How to get.
As it turned out, it is easy to reach the zoo by bus 112 – from the metro stop «Nádraží Holešovice». Even in case you drive by car, you won’t get lost, as the signs leading to the zoo start several kilometers before. One of the signs (unfortunately, we did not take the picture of it) even shows how much time various animals (leopard, elephant, giraffe, turtle) need to get from this point to the zoo.
Different interesting things will pop up even before you enter the zoo. At the entrance you will see the footprints of different animals as well as the information about newborn babies and the schedule of feeding the animals.
The latter seemed very useful to us and we built our route in the zoo so that to see several feedings and other animals on the way. We decided to start with the aardvark and saw a lot of others on the way to his cage.
For instance, we really like the meerkats, and their cage was next to aardvarks. This was the whole playful family!
The aardvarks live in the south of Africa and lead a lonely life. During the day they sleep in the hole and at night they hunt for the insects, digging them out with the sharp nails and leaking with the sticky tongue.
Feeding.
On the way to the next feedings we encountered the pastures of various ungulates:
We mostly liked the feeding of hippos: even though we saw them before in the wildlife in Burundi, this time they were extremely close, which allowed to understand how huge they are. Also, despite they seem so fat and clumsy, they are really dangerous. No matter how hard the human tried, they have not been domesticated because of being so aggressive.
In the zoo, the hippos climbed out of the water veeeery slowly, only ten minutes after the keepers had left the cabbage leafs for them. Most probably this was the mother and her baby. During each feeding the keepers tell about the animals, but in Czech language.
After having their food, the hippos entered the water as clumsily and they had climbed out of it.
Pavilions.
After that, there were no feedings of the animals we could be interested in for a couple of hours and we could take the time to see various small animals in the closed pavilions representing different geographic zones.
This mixture of kangaroos and hares (we did not remember the name) are hard to be photographed because of the special dusk light they prefer, and they seemed very funny to us.
We saw the real kangaroo that close for the first time too: this is, for instance, the close relative of the “classical” macropus kangaroo, who was considered extinct for a long time and then was rediscovered in New Zealand and later – in Australia.
This mommy made really scary sounds for those who tried to approach the cage.
Some more strange and unusual animals.
In addition to the animal display, you may also enjoy the view of the city, since the park is situated on the hill. Moreover, the cable road leads to the zoo, being also an alternative way for reaching the top of the park.
Monkeys.
The zoo has many kinds of monkeys, including our favourite gorillas. A week after our visit one of them gave birth to a baby: the keepers did not even notice that she had been pregnant and she had had several miscarriages before.
Predators.
Of course, the zoo also has many big animals and predators.
At the moment of our visit there were billboards all over Prague: an elephant had been born to the zoo. It was not easy to get through the crowd to get a view of a newborn baby.
The zoo flamingos turned out to be very pink, the colour was even in between pink and orange contrasting the colour of flamingos we saw in the wild in Tanzania or in Tenerife Zoo.
Official page.
We spent half a day in the zoo, and did not see all the animals. The territory of the park is huge and in case you are moved by one animal for too long, you won’t see many others. We recommend to plan the whole sunny day for your visit, not a weekend. In our opinion the zoo corresponds to the title of the best zoo in continental Europe: according to our experience, only Tenerife Zoo is better, mostly due to its shows, but Tenerife is an island, so the title remains fair. You can find information at official page https://www.zoopraha.cz/en. As a bonus, you may visit an unusual café not far from «Nádraží Holešovice». You cannot help noticing it.
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