The Sofia Zoo is one of the capital city’s favorite and most visited attractions. It is also one of the 100 National Tourist Sites of Bulgaria. The facility was established back in 1888 by Prince Ferdinand, as world-famous experts in breeding of rare and precious species were attracted for the purpose. Over 1,500 exotic animals reside here nowadays.

© Photo: Gergana Mancheva

© Photo: Gergana Mancheva

“Our work combines lots of requirements,” the expert says. “It is not simply throwing food to some animals in cages. We cooperate with many zoos across Europe and the world, we exchange animals all the time. For instance, we contracted these days the receiving of two Red kangaroos, the biggest kangaroo species by the Belgrade Zoo. In exchange we will provide a serval wild cat that was born here in 2013. I see this as good bargaining, as we haven’t had a kangaroo for a while and we used to have smaller kinds before. The young couple will arrive in the beginning of November, as the cage is ready with a nice yard and central heating for the winter. The idea of the existence of penguins again has been available for a long time, since visitors ask. We will have penguins for sure, but we need an appropriate accommodation for them and the ready-to-go project is to be implemented as of next year, I hope. We should respond to certain breeding requirements, in order to get penguins. Tropical cats and wolves were born here in 2013 that are tame now. We adapted young wolves with the rest gradually, as the strangest thing was that their mom recognized them at once, though she hadn’t seen them for a few months. She is the leader, so they faced no problems afterwards under her protection. We had separated them form her as early as their second week to tame them with the idea future vaccinations to become easier…”

© Photo: Gergana Mancheva

Elephant Artaida is now 55 and has turned into an emblematic animal over these years. Radko Sertov gives us more details:

 “She is fine, luckily, as in a zoo an elephant can reach 70 – 80 years. We provide lots of care, including pedicure, disinfection and cleaning of feet, since usually diseases kick off from there due to the closed space and limited movements. Chico the Rhino is another popular animal here. He is pretty big and white male, who is very calm and good-hearted. We have envisaged expansion activities for the future, along with the creation of an exclusive African zone. We want to have giraffes for a first time in our history, but we have to respond to several EU requirements first. We managed to reconstruct the dwelling of the lion couple recently, as now the concrete yard is covered with natural materials, soil and grass, new trees. Now the place looks much better and the animals are much calmer in here. Winter food supplies have already been provided, with over 100 tons of hay included, along with crops and beet. The animals are not hungry, they have all they need. However, recently we fall victims of a bad habit – visitors leave home-bred Red-eared sliders at our lake that appear to be a competitive and aggressive turtle species, not common for this altitude. If this phenomenon is not stopped on time, only Red-eared sliders will be available at lakes and rivers in some time, since they push away our species,” Radko Sertov warns.

English version: Zhivko Stanchev