{"id":36559,"date":"2025-07-25T15:03:25","date_gmt":"2025-07-25T15:03:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/36559\/"},"modified":"2025-07-25T15:03:25","modified_gmt":"2025-07-25T15:03:25","slug":"zookeepers-in-prague-turn-into-puppeteers-to-save-baby-vultures","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/36559\/","title":{"rendered":"Zookeepers in Prague turn into puppeteers to save baby vultures"},"content":{"rendered":"

PRAGUE — Zookeepers in Prague<\/a> sometimes have to become puppeteers to save newborn birds rejected by their parents. This was the case for a lesser yellow-headed vulture chick hatched three weeks ago.<\/p>\n

Bird keeper Anton\u00edn Vaidl said Thursday that when a dummy egg disappeared from the nest, it signaled to keepers that the parents were not ready to care for their two babies, despite doing so in 2022 and 2023.<\/p>\n

The first-born is being kept in a box and fed using a puppet designed to mimic a parent bird, while another is expected to hatch in the next few days.<\/p>\n

Vaidl said the puppet is needed to make sure the bird will be capable of breeding, which it won\u2019t if it gets used to human interaction.<\/p>\n

He explained that the puppet doesn\u2019t have to be a perfect replica of an adult bird because the chick responds to certain signals, such as the pale orange coloration on its featherless head and neck.<\/p>\n

Lesser yellow-headed vultures live in the wild in Latin America and Mexico<\/a>. Prague Zoo is one of only three zoos in Europe that breed them.<\/p>\n

In the past, the park successfully applied this treatment to save the critically endangered Javan green magpie<\/a> and two rhinoceros hornbill chicks. The puppet-feeding technique is applicable for birds that live in pairs.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe method has been working well,\u201d Vaidl said. \u201cWe\u2019ll see what happens with the vultures.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"PRAGUE — Zookeepers in Prague sometimes have to become puppeteers to save newborn birds rejected by their parents.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":36560,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[51],"tags":[29882,1147,966,1685,2027,793,2031,79,12363,201,965],"class_list":{"0":"post-36559","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-wildlife","8":"tag-29882","9":"tag-animals","10":"tag-article","11":"tag-climate-and-environment","12":"tag-endangered-species","13":"tag-general-news","14":"tag-oddities","15":"tag-science","16":"tag-vultures","17":"tag-wildlife","18":"tag-world-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36559","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36559"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36559\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/36560"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36559"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36559"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36559"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}