Irina the bear is heading to the Děčín Zoo

"Thank you! Together we brought Irina closer to Bruno!" This is the message the Děčín Zoo sends to all those who supported the campaign "We are taking Irina to Bruno", which the zoo wanted to draw attention to the upcoming transport of a female Kamchatka bear (we wrote about the campaign in HERE).

After many years, the Děčín Zoo will have a complete bear pair. The campaign has aroused huge public interest. "The kilometres of Irina's journey to Bruno were redeemed in just 4 days! Their support was overwhelming and showed that they are as big-hearted as we are and really care about the bears. 176 donors took part in this amazing fundraiser! There were even some who purchased a whopping 15 miles at a time! Mileage purchases were made across the country. Most people contributed from the Děčín region, but money went from all over the Ústí nad Labem region, but also from the Mozavian-Silesian, Hradec Králové, Liberec, Karlovy Vary, South Moravia, Central Bohemia and South Bohemia regions, and we even had an overlap abroad, for example to Germany or Bahrain!", describes the spokesperson of the Děčín zoo Alena Houšková enthusiastically.

Visitors have been calling for Bruno the bear not to stay alone in the zoo for a long time. That is why Děčín Zoo is glad that it was able to find a way to involve them in this important step. "We wanted visitors to feel part of this big change. Irina will be a great addition to our zoo and we believe that the people who were involved in her arrival will also develop a strong relationship with her," the spokesperson adds. The transport itself will take place in the coming months. This is a complex process that requires careful coordination between Zoo Brno and Zoo Děčín and must be carried out with the needs of both bears in mind. The Zoo will keep the zoo informed about the individual steps.

Answers to the most common questions that arose with the arrival of the new female bear (Answers by zoologist Petr Haberland)

Why, after so many years, when we have instilled in you through commented feedings and other activities that our male does not mind being alone, because the bear is by nature a solitary animal that does not seek out individuals of its own species except during the breeding season - on the contrary, it sees them as intruders into its territory, do we bring a female bear to Bruno?

• Zoo Brno urgently needs to place the female Irina in another facility. The enclosure of Kamchatka bears in the Brno garden will soon undergo reconstruction, after which the polar bears, which currently inhabit exhibits that no longer meet the conditions of modern breeding, will find a new home there.

Why to our place in Decin and not elsewhere?

• Apart from Brno and Decin, the Kamchatka bear is currently bred in six other institutions (one in France, two in Germany and three in Ukraine). So, firstly, the choice was quite limited and secondly, of course, it is always best to transport the animal over the shortest possible distance. We have the capacity for a second bear in the Děčín zoo, so it was decided and agreed by the brown bear breeding coordinator that Irina from Brno would be moved to us.

Will we ever see cubs from our bears?

• Unfortunately, no. As already mentioned, the Kamchatka bear is very under-represented in European breeding. And the vast majority of them are relatively old and non-breeding animals. And its numbers will certainly not increase, but the opposite.

Another success is the birth of eight young Thornbill chicks

After a long time, Děčín Zoo can boast of breeding a reptile species!

In the Paradise Islands Exposition we managed to breed 8 young of a smaller agama species from Southeast Asia - goat thornsnakes. That this is a success is evidenced by the fact that breeding this species is not entirely simple. "Adult animals, which mostly come from captures, like to be stressed, die due to long transports or parasite infestation. That's why we are very happy to have been able to breed this species several months before it arrived. One of the females laid her eggs in the substrate directly in the display tank, where the eggs incubated without our supervision, so that one day the keeper reported that he had caught several hatchlings in the tank, to which more were added within a few days," described zoologist Petr Haberland.

It is common practice to separate the pregnant female to lay her eggs under supervision in a separate terrarium, or to remove the clutch from the exposure tank and in both cases to incubate the eggs in a special incubator. As the animals were very shy and hardly showed themselves after arrival, the keepers did not notice that the female was growing a belly, a clear sign of early laying. They intervened as little as possible in the exhibit to give the animals the necessary calm and to keep their stress to a bare minimum. "And for this peace of mind provided, the newts rewarded us with this beautiful gift," added the zoologist. According to information on the internet, baby newts raised in human care are the opposite of their parents, are relatively tame, learn to hand-feed and are not nearly as prone to stress. And it's true. From the start, the babies take to food beautifully - small crickets and other insects.

For a long time, terraristics in the Děčín Zoo was somewhat on the "second track". In recent years, however, the zoo has been trying to modernize the terrariums in the Paradise Islands Exposition by replacing the old lighting with new, better quality LED lights and UV lamps, which provide the kept reptiles with the light they need for proper metabolism, especially the diurnal lizards. The second step is to expand the collection of newly bred terrarium animals. "You can already see some of them in the exhibits, such as the loggerhead turtles, coastal agamas and cave anolis. Others - such as the beautiful daytime scorpions dasia emeralds, which came to our zoo at the beginning of this year from the Ostrava Zoo, are still being kept in the background, where they have to grow to a larger size and where the sex of each animal has to be profiled," added Petr Haberlad.

The goat thorn borer lives mainly in southern Vietnam and Cambodia, inhabiting the tree floor of mountain rainforests. It is a smaller olive, brown to dark grey coloured lizard growing up to 30 cm long, of which 17 cm is the tail. It weighs 65-70 g. The males have a yellow throat pouch below their neck, which they use to mark their territory. It is active during the day, spending most of its time lurking for prey, clinging to the branches of vegetation. The thorn-eater's food is various invertebrates, especially insects and spiders. Its Czech, and indeed Latin, name is given by the growths on the back of its head.