San Diego, CA (special) -- Shimon the peres has left Israel to make a permanent home in San Diego.

No, not Shimon Peres. The former prime minister of Israel is far too busy serving as minister of regional cooperation in Israel's new government under Ehud Barak to even think about visiting San Diego right now.

Bound for a home in the San Diego Zoo is Shimon the peres -- a bearded vulture which was named for the then prime minister about three years ago. Peres is the Hebrew word for "bearded vulture," which also is known in zoological circles as a Eurasian lammergeier.

Naming a bird of prey after a prime minister who won the Nobel Prize for Peace is not so far-fetched as it seems.More than a half century ago, the future prime minister actually named himself after the peres.

Veterinarian Yonatan Peres, the son of Shimon Peres, recently related to HERITAGE the story of how his family took the name "Peres." In 1945, he said, his father was directed by David Ben-Gurion, who then was chairman of the Jewish Agency, and Palmach founder Itzhak Sadeh to lead a 12-member expedition to map the Negev. With 12 camels, the group spent 22 days trekking along the Arava valley from Be'er Afloug to Oum Rashrash, which was the forerunner settlement of Eilat. The 12 trekkers included members of the Palmach, the Noar Odev youth movement, and several scientists, including a botanist, zoologist and an archeologist. "All of a sudden my father -- who then was named Shimon Persky-- saw a nest on the tree," Dr. Peres told HERITAGE. "He thought it was a vulture's or an eagle's. He climbed on the tree and found the nestlings inside.

Dr. Yonatan Peres (above) bids goodbye to the  peres, Shimon, named for his father  (below)

Then Prof. Heinrich Mendelson, who was a walking encyclopaedia and later became head of the zoology department at Tel Aviv University, said 'yes, you have just discovered a nest of peres.' 

"And the rest of them said 'Persky is not a Hebrew name; so now you can take the Hebrew name Peres and this is the real story of how Persky became Peres."

Besides being related to the bird's namesake, Yonatan Peres is quite interested in the program because he is a veterinarian and a close friend of Dr. Igal Horowitz, the Tel Aviv-Ramat Gan Zoological Center veterinarian who got Shimon the peres ready for his trip to San Diego.

If all goes well, Shimon the peres will mate at the San Diego Zoo with an unnamed female peres already living there. In other words, his relocation is a shidduch , a match. The matchmaker, or shadchan, is the Vienna-based Foundation for the Conservation of the Bearded Vulture.

In the complicated world of international breeding, Shimon goes to the San Diego Zoo. Later a pair of pereses will be shipped from Vienna to Tel Aviv University. Yet another pair will be sent to the Tel Aviv-Ramat Gan Zoological Center from Kazakhstan.

The unnamed female peres came to the San Diego Zoo about 4 1/2 years ago from the Berlin Tierpark, a zoo located in what was formerly East Berlin. 

Although some celebrity animals at the San Diego Zoo are given names, such as those used in educational or entertainment programs, the vast majority of the animals are not given names, according to Dave Rimlinger, curator for birds at the San Diego Zoo.

Apparently, like Noah's wife and Lot's wife in the Bible, the future wife of Shimon the peres will be forever nameless. But we can think of her as Shimon's beshert --the one destined for him. Yonatan Peres told HERITAGE he hoped that if the Zoo ever decides to name the female it will consider the name "Sonia" -- after his mother, the wife of the former prime minister. When the bearded vulture arrived In Tel Aviv three years ago from the breeding center in Vienna, he was named Shimon at arrival ceremonies attended by Yossi Sarid, then minister of the environment, and today, under Barak, minister of education. Shimon Peres skipped those ceremonies welcoming his namesake, pleading that his schedule as prime minister at the time just didn't permit.  The bearded vulture left Israel July 14 and after a flight to California was transferred to a federal quarantine facility in San Ysidro.

Shimon, top, and his San Diego Zoo beshert

A month-long quarantine is required for all birds entering the United States to ensure that they are not carriers of any diseases, particularly Newcastle's Disease which could devastate local poultry, according to Rimlinger.

After the month in the San Ysidro facility, Shimon will spend another month in a quarantine area at the San Diego Zoo, just to make certain he doesn't carry any other kinds of diseases that could affect wildlife. During this time, he will be given a thorough physical examination by the zoo's veterinarians.

However, the first month at the San Diego Zoo will not be a totally lonely time for Shimon. He will get to meet his "intended." His beshert will be moved to a cage immediately alongside Shimon's.

Even though the two pereses will be in separate cages, "they probably could touch each other through the wire mesh but not enough to do any damage if one tries to attack the other," Rimlinger said.

By observing the pair side-by-side, the curator said, "we can tell whether or not we think there is going to be aggression when we finally do put them together. If they don't show any aggression, we will feel fairly safe in putting the two together in the exhibit."

The 3 1/2-foot long bearded vultures each will occupy an enclosure about 12 feet wide by 15 feet deep and 8 feet high, Rimlinger said. 

When they are moved to the public exhibit space, probably about Sept. 15, it will be to an aviary measuring 67 feet long by 35 feet wide by 35 feet high. The pereses will have some interesting neighbors: on one side will be an aviary for harpy eagles, and on the other for Andean condors.

The curator said the pereses are expected to share their quarters with a group of crow-like birds called "choughs" which generally live in the same kind of mountain and open range habitat.

In the wild, the peres patrols high and wide looking for dead animals, particularly those whose flesh has been eaten or rotted away, leaving the bones exposed.

"They have a real peculiar habit of feeding on bones," Rimlinger said. "They actually take bones from dead animals up in the air and drop them on rocks, and then go down and eat the marrow inside. Or they will swallow the whole pieces of bone with the marrow on the inside. This is one of the only species in the world that is known to do that."

Although the aviary is large, it is not large enough to permit the vultures to fly to bone-smashing heights, so the San Diego Zoo will provide the bones in small crunchy chunks. Cow bones will be obtained from local butchers, Rimlinger said.

The reason people all over the world want the two pereses to set up house is because that species--although still numbering in the thousands--has been disappearing from various areas of the world as a result either of hunting or population pressures. No peres is known to be still living in the wild in Israel, for example.

To get the two pereses to breed, said Rimlinger, "hopefully we won't have to do a thing other than put them together." However, he cautioned, "it could be several years before we get any production. I hope not. Our bird should be old enough to breed this coming year. It was hatched in 1994."

Shimon by comparison is a middle aged male, having been hatched in 1981. A peres can usually live in excess of 40 years.

Shimon bred with a female in Tel Aviv and they produced a chick. But later the chick died, and still later the female died. 

At the San Diego Zoo, said Rimlinger, "our hope is that they hit it off right away and start to breed but sometimes, especially if one bird is just coming of age, we may have to wait awhile to produce something."

Shimon and his intended mate will be the only pair of pereses in captivity in the United States, Rimlinger said. 

Assuming their union is successful, the female peres normally will lay two eggs. When the eggs hatch in the wild, a process typically occurs that is known as Cainism -- from the biblical story of Cain and Abel, in which the older brother (Cain) killed the younger.

"It is a real strange phenomenon, but it occurs in many of the large birds of prey," Rimlinger said. "You can look at the second egg as insurance, I suppose. If something happens to the first egg, there is a second one, so at least the parents will be successful with one.

"But if they hatch two eggs, you actually have one chick being aggressive to the other chick, to the point that the younger chick usually dies. If the first one is healthy, it could hatch a few days before the second one, and therefore has a big physical advantage over the other one."

Interested in reintroducing as many pereses as possible to the wild, the curator said the normal procedure at the zoo is to whisk the second chick away and to raise it somewhere away from its parents and its sibling.

Although the peres' breeding program will be a new experience for the San Diego Zoo, it has learned much from its successful and world famous program to pull the California condor back from the precipice of extinction.

"They are not closely related to condors but they are sort of similar in their habits and their feeding," Rimlinger said. "The condors were down to 27 birds total in the mid 1980's and now we are up to over 150." In comparison, he said, there are thousands of pereses in the world.