This image is all over the RuNet, but it’s originally from Germany. The Tierpark Hagenbeck was one of the first zooparks to use moats instead of barred cages to separate the animals from the public. As for the pun, I couldn’t resist it… yeah, I know it’s bad, but I needed a cheap laugh after a nasty-ass day at work…
BMD
On 15 February, the Moscow Zoopark will begin its 150th anniversary celebration. It opened in 1864 under a decree issued by Tsar Aleksandr II Nikolayevich.
The zoo began in a city park designed for strolling along the Patriarch’s Ponds in Presnensky Raion in Moscow. Back then, it was the first zoo in the Russian Empire, now, it’s one of the largest zoos in the world.
Anatoly Bogdanov, professor of zoölogy and anthropology at Moscow University, was one of the main initiators for the zoo’s creation. He called it an “open-air living museum”.
When the Moscow Zoopark opened, it had 134 domestic animals, 153 wild animals and birds, and 7 reptiles. Muscovites’ favourites amongst the exotic animals were lions, leopards, and the rhinoceros.
Today, the Moscow Zoopark’s collection of mammals, fish, reptiles, and amphibians is one of the largest and most exceptional in the world. It has 8,000 animals from 1,000 species.
The zoo survived hard times during the Russian Revolution and the Great Patriotic War. However, people who truly loved animals worked here. They kept watch of their pets around the clock, even when incendiary bombs fell on the city. They brought blankets from their homes to cover the enclosures’ broken windows and comforted the animals during airstrikes.
In the 1990s, the Moscow Zoopark started a reconstruction; it built 50 new enclosures. Due to the enormous construction efforts, it became difficult to hold the animals, some of which had to be temporarily transferred to other zoos, including those in neighboring countries. Some of the monkeys went to a Ukrainian zoo.
New exhibits displayed rare animals that hadn’t previously been in zoos, like Asiatic lions, Grévy’s zebras, South African giraffes, and Indian elephants.
The Moscow Zoopark participates in many international programmes to maintain and breed rare animal species; it exchanges animals with many zoos throughout the world.
Samson the Giraffe, a male reticulated giraffe, is one of the symbols of the Moscow Zoopark.
14 February 2014
Russia Behind the Headlines
Editor’s Note:
The Moscow Zoopark protested the putting down of Marius the Giraffe by the København Zoo most strenuously. Of course, we all know that it caused quite an international stink, didn’t it? There was no need to have killed Marius; many other zoos were ready to take him in. As the Moscow Zoopark put it, “Keeping Giraffes Safe for 150 years”.
BMD
Click here for the Moscow Zoopark website
Parishioners at a church in Vancouver BC CANADA can attend services with their pets. Let everything that hath breath praise the Lord! Praise ye the Lord!
The governments of Kenya and Tanzania are holding a joint census of elephants and other large mammals. Are the tickbirds the census-takers? Perspirin’ minds wanna know…
Lions bagging zee’s at a Kenya Wildlife Service conservation centre.
A three-week-old crested porcupine riding on its mother’s back at a zoo in Szeged (Szeged DIstrict. Csongrád County. Dél-Alföld Region) HUNGARY.
Yellow baboons chillin’ at the Antwerp Zoo in Anvers/Antwerpen (Arrondissement Antwerpen. Province Antwerpen. Flanders Region) BELGIUM.
A tiny white lion cub was born at the Belgrade Zoo in Belgrade (Belgrade Municipal Okrug) SERBIA. The little guy doesn’t have a name yet.
A stork struttin’ his stuff at the Le parc de l’Orangerie Zoo in Strasbourg (Arrondissement Strasbourg-Ville. Département Bas-Rhin. Région Alsace) FRANCE.
A spectacled bear checkin’ out the photog at a zoological centre in Anvers/Antwerpen Belgium.
13 October 2013
RIA-Novosti
http://en.ria.ru/photolents/20131013/184070143_8/Lion-cub-and-other-animal-news.html
2012
Palaeontologists wrote in a paper published in the journal Science that the teeth of Duckbilled Dinosaurs were better adapted to grind and chew tough leaves and shoots than the molars of horses, buffaloes, elephants, and other herbivorous mammals, which casts doubt on the theories concerning the uniqueness of the teeth of warm-blooded animals.
5 October 2012
Sergei Yolkin
RIA-Novosti
Voices from Russia 
You must be logged in to post a comment.