Groundhog Day will also be celebrated in Vitebsk
Vitebsk will now be able to celebrate its Groundhog Day. The Vitebsk Zoo has acquired a young pair of bobaks, or steppe marmots, from a breeding center for these animals in the Moscow region, the zoo's director Irina Orlova told a BELTA correspondent.
The young pair was purchased with sponsorship funds and arrived in Vitebsk this past weekend. The animals are currently in a 30-day quarantine, after which they will be attempted to be put into hibernation. Therefore, zoo visitors will only be able to see the newcomers in February, when the animals wake up and emerge from their burrows. In America, Groundhog Day is traditionally celebrated at this time, which is observed to determine the proximity of spring's arrival.
The bobaks are not the first acquisition of the Vitebsk Zoo this year. The greatest interest among visitors was sparked by a new predator – the jaguar Yago. Also, in the spring, the South American camelid Petrusha settled here, who was delivered from Grodno as part of an exchange program between zoos.
The bobak, or marmot, or common (steppe) marmot (lat. Marmota bobak) is a rodent of the marmot genus, an inhabitant of the virgin steppes of Eurasia, and one of the largest squirrels: its body length is 50-70 cm, and the mass of fattened males reaches 10 kg.
Ekaterina Knyazeva