Well, we have, I have, at the moment, 54, including some marginated tortoises that Fabian loaned me because he has no garden in Leipzig. And well, I do not breed on a large scale and I usually find interested persons who takes them. I do not sell them but I… Read More
So we can look forward to a paper?… Read More
This is one of the papers I should write, yeah. Good. Read More
And what do you do with them after you have been successful?… Read More
How many do you have?… Read More
No, I just tried to discourage him for about five years. I told him we need a lawyer in the family, we need a medical doctor in the family, a dentist maybe, and they earn well. But he didn’t obey me. Now I’m quite proud and it’s very nice to… Read More
How did you get involved with breeding the Mediterranean tortoises or keeping them?… Read More
I started about 50 years ago and at that time, hundreds and thousands of tortoises were imported from Greece and Yugoslavia. And they were sold or holiday makers brought them back from their holidays. And usually, after a few months, the new owners had enough of the tortoises and brought… Read More
One cannot avoid, if you work in a zoo, you cannot avoid that the whole family get into contact with the zoo. First of all, you usually work more than eight hours, 10 hours or more. You have to go weekends to the zoo and maybe the children are coming… Read More
And I keep at home, keep and breed Mediterranean tortoises at home. And usually Fabian cared for them because I just couldn’t find time. Now I have to find time to care for them and observe them. So his first wish for a profession was to become a curator of… Read More
Did you encourage him?… Read More
Well, we have two sons and a daughter and the middle one, a son, is senior curator in Leipzig Zoo. Read More
And how did he get involved in the zoo and this interest?… Read More
She allowed bottle feeding. We thought, wonderful. But after about five days, that was a very young female that never have had a young herself. And after five days, she had enough of this foster child and left it on the ground. And now the great thing happened. The other… Read More
So that’s, I think, a very good success story. Read More
Did anybody follow in your footsteps in your family in the zoo profession?… Read More
And Bonobo was a special case. From the beginning on, our way to hand-rear was to have some apes half a year at home because the first half year, they are carried around. And that is an important point. My wife really had to carry the gorillas and orangutans around… Read More
And this we reached with almost all animals. Of course, with smaller monkeys, as the wooly monkeys and so on, this was much faster reach. And the Bonobo in Frankfurt was a very special case. Her mother died during the night she gave birth. And the young one, we have… Read More
And we thought, wonderful, that’s great, we’ll leave it there. But, of course, the keeper would have had to bottle feed it and this animal was not trained to come to the fence. And our keeper tried and tried for hours and didn’t succeed. And so we decided, we are… Read More
Did you ever take animals home to care for them?… Read More