We NEED more Ridzinieks reconition.
Ridzinieks is the oldest documented manul on Manulization and yet he only has two likes. Go on google search up "Oldest manul photo" the oldest one you find is from the the 2000's or later; this photo of Ridzineiks is from 1972! How come there is no one talking about this Soviet-era fluffball! Please give him the love he deserves.
PS: Roman & Vika, How do you get information about your manuls?
Comments 3
Hi, Elliot!
We are glad that you found the photo of Ridzineiks on the website! This photo was very difficult to obtain, by the way! We were lucky to meet a person who worked at the Riga Zoo and photographed manuls, but he did not have photographs of manuls from such a distant past. However, he remembered that, it seems, in the 1970s a set of postcards with photos of animals from the Riga Zoo was published, and on one of them there was a manul. We searched for these postcards in philatelic shops and managed to find one set! We ordered it for ourselves and were very happy when it arrived to us! Then we scanned the postcard and… now this photo is on the website :)
By the way, also pay attention to the manul Calcutta on our website! If my memory does not fail me, then currently these are the oldest photos of a manul on the website.
We find information in all possible ways. About manuls that lived in the internet era, it is possible to search for information online; we also maintain contact with many zoos, and people also send us information by email (thank you very much!). It is much more difficult to learn anything about manuls that lived before the spread of the internet. We personally travel to zoos and get acquainted with zoologists and collection curators, ask them questions, and try to maintain contact with them. We look for people who worked in zoos or photographed in zoos and try to establish contact with them. We also have the European studbooks of the manul 😉
The main difficulty is to find photographs of manuls from the pre-internet era, since photography was done on film, and finding such images is incredibly difficult.
Roman Paulovverified_filled ,
Thank you for telling me!