Now the public has an opportunity to get to know this rather rare, in some respects mysterious and very cute mouse, the giant cloud rat (Phloeomys pallidus), it still doesn’t have an official Czech name. “We have made a new environment to display this giant mouse on the upper floor of the pavilion of the Indonesian jungle,” said the spokesperson of the ZOO Vít Kahle.
Prague ZOO has kept these rare rodents from the northern Philippine island since 2007; by the beginning of 2008 they already had raised their first pup. The pup celebrated its first birthday on Sunday 11th January 2009. It is fully grown now and people can see it in the Indonesian jungle pavilion. The giant cloud rat is active at night, so its living quarters have been arranged to replicate a moonlit night. There are plenty of branches for climbing and boxes as substitute nesting hollows. Two breeding pairs of the giant cloud rats stay inside, where they are getting ready for further breeding. This kind of rodent is a rarity for specialists and experts in all world ZOOs. In Europe, London ZOO was first to succeed in breeding them in the 80´s. Nowadays there exists only one bigger breeding programme apart from its Philippine home and that is in the New York ZOO in the Bronx where nine of them now live.
“Since last year Prague ZOO has been keeping the European stud book for this species and supports its European colleagues to establish their own breeding lines. As a result they have been another five ZOOs cooperating (Poznaň, Ostrava, Jihlava, Riga, Vienna) with the first pup is being raised in the ZOO in Poznaň. Many kinds of Philippine rodents have been severely endangered by the devastation of their environment. By breeding the giant cloud rat we can get precious information for use in the future for saving this endangered species,” stated V. Kahle.