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Thread: Pandas!

  1. #31
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    Odd op-ed piece

    At least it's about Hong Kong too.

    Pandas may provide a population lesson
    Ocean Park pandas Ying Ying and Le Le are struggling to breed and could be heading back to their native habitat in a bid to encourage them
    The stress of Hong Kong is likewise a factor in couples in the city delaying having children or deciding against the idea
    PUBLISHED : Saturday, 17 November, 2018, 10:37pm
    UPDATED : Saturday, 17 November, 2018, 10:37pm
    SCMP Editorial



    The giant panda pair at Ocean Park have much in common with the typical Hong Kong couple; they are not that interested in having offspring. Pandas, just like Hongkongers, have a low birth rate. The reasons may not be identical, but the solution could well be the same. Families need the right environment to thrive.

    For pandas Ying Ying and Le Le, the key could well be heading back to their native habitat in Sichuan province to encourage them to start a family. Pandas are notoriously difficult to breed, but in captivity, the rate of having cubs falls to just 26 per cent of when in the wild. In the 11 years the pandas have called Hong Kong home, Ying Ying has had two phantom pregnancies and miscarried once. Biology is at play, but being the star attraction and a public favourite surely does not help; put simply, it is stressful.

    The stress of Hong Kong is likewise a factor in couples in the city delaying having children or deciding against the idea. Work hours are long, flats small and cramped and children an expensive proposition. Unsurprisingly, the fertility rate is one of the lowest in the world, being just 1.13, well below the 2.1 per couple necessary to keep the population growing. With Hong Kong’s development and growth in mind, authorities have for years been looking for ways to encourage couples to have children and attract people from elsewhere to make the city home.

    Improving living conditions would seem the sensible approach and there is a push in that direction through increasing the length of maternity and paternity leave. A suggestion that Ying Ying and Le Le would have a better chance of mating by sending them to the Wolong panda conservation area in Sichuan is in the same vein; reconstructed with Hong Kong funding after the 2008 earthquake, the sanctuary would give them quality time together in a less stressful environment. With the breeding period being 130 days, they could perhaps stay there for a year and a replacement pair of pandas could be loaned to Ocean Park. If the approach is successful and Ying ying gives birth, the happy family that is eventually brought back to Hong Kong could serve as a useful lesson in boosting Hong Kong’s population.
    Gene Ching
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  2. #32
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    Two Pandas Had A Fight For A Tree | iPanda

    Gene Ching
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  3. #33
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    Nike air max 97 colorway



    THIS NIKE AIR MAX 97 COLORWAY IS GIVING US MAD ‘KUNG FU PANDA’ VIBES
    KEENAN HIGGINS JANUARY 10, 2019

    Everyone in the sneaker community is celebrating the Chinese New Year from a different perspective, from Pharrell’s adidas BYW collab to Nike’s special iteration of the Air Max 95. However, whether intentional or not, the Swoosh also has a pair of Air Max 97s arriving soon inspired by one of, if not the biggest mascot in Chinese culture: the panda.



    The core black & white colorway is balanced out throughout with an almost vortex-like swirl pattern. Of course, that’s mainly due to the shoe’s circular construction and textured upper that gives it even more dimension. The leather mudguard is a nice way to switch up the otherwise fully-textile/mesh build, and where the two colorways were placed in conjunction to one another proves that the Nike designers over in Oregon are definitely doing things right over at the headquarters. It might be the Year of the Pig, but the panda will always be a true symbol of China — word to Desiigner!

    The panda-inspired Nike Air Max 97 seen here is expected to drop in the next few weeks via select retailers and Nike.com. Get a better look below:






    ABOUT THE AUTHOR
    Keenan Higgins Lifestyle Editor NYC-based photojournalist, self-proclaimed sneakerhead, and fiend for legit streetwear — #nohypebeast though! — that works daily to seamlessly link style, art, urban culture, and music on a common platform.
    Hold the phone. It's 'panda' because it's B&W? Why not yin yang? Or why not skunk for that matter? I don't see it.
    Gene Ching
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  4. #34
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    albino

    woah.

    Chinese nature reserve releases world’s first image of an albino giant panda in the wild
    All-white beast spotted wandering through the Wolong National Nature Reserve in Sichuan province
    Bear is probably one or two years old and looks perfectly healthy, scientist says
    Zhuang Pinghui
    Published: 8:30pm, 25 May, 2019


    The all-white bear was captured on film in a nature reserve in southwest China. Photo: Weibo

    China on Saturday released the world’s first ever photograph of an albino giant panda in the wild.
    The image of the bear walking through the Wolong National Nature Reserve in the southwestern province of Sichuan last month was captured by a motion activated camera at an altitude of about 2,000 metres above sea level, China News Service reported.
    It clearly shows the animal’s unique physical characteristics including its snowy white hair and claws, and red eyes.
    “This is the first time a fully albino wild giant panda has been caught on camera, indicating there must be a gene mutation in the giant panda population,” Li Sheng, a researcher at Peking University’s School of Life Sciences, was quoted as saying.


    A scientist guessed the panda to be between one and two years old. Photo: Weibo

    “Judging from the photo, the panda is physically strong and taking steady steps, suggesting the gene mutation is not affecting its normal life.”
    While the mutation was not harmful to the panda in physiological terms, Li said it did have some downsides such as the bear being more conspicuous in its environment and being more sensitive to the sun.
    It would not have a significant effect on the panda’s activity or ability to reproduce, he said, adding that the animal was probably between one and two years old.
    Officials from the nature reserve said they would install more motion cameras to help monitor the rare bear’s growth and interactions with the rest of the panda population, and to see if it produced any offspring.
    The albinism mutation is recessive so would only appear in the bear’s offspring if both parents had it, the report said.
    Gene Ching
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  5. #35
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    RIP Chuang Chuang

    Giant panda's sudden death in Thai zoo sparks Chinese investigation
    By Amy Woodyatt, CNN
    Updated 6:36 AM ET, Wed September 18, 2019


    Officials said Chuang Chuang, pictured here in 2007, collapsed Monday in his enclosure at the Chiang Mai Zoo shortly after a meal of bamboo leaves.

    (CNN)A beloved giant panda on loan to Thailand has died suddenly in a northern Thai zoo, prompting an investigation by Chinese experts.
    Chuang Chuang, a 19-year-old male giant panda, was given to the Southeast Asian country in 2003 "to represent the relationship between China and Thailand," along with a female panda, Lin Hui, according to Chiang Mai Zoo's website.
    Chinese state news agency Xinhua said the China Conservation and Research Center for the Giant Panda would send experts to Thailand to work with their Thai counterparts to establish the cause of the panda's death.
    Thais woke up to the news of Chuang Chuang's death on Tuesday, with many mourning his passing on social media.
    Chiang Mai Zoo director Wutthichai Muangmun said that Chuang Chuang was eating bamboo before he died, according to AFP.
    "He was walking around, but staggered and fell to the ground," he told reporters.
    The relationship between Chuang Chuang and Lin Hui became a source of public fascination as attempts were made to get the pair to mate.
    Chuang Chuang was put on a low-carb diet and shown videos of mating pandas, but eventually the zoo resorted to artificial insemination and Lin Hui gave birth in 2009, AFP news agency reported.
    A panda's average life span is 14 to 20 years in the wild, but the animals can live as long as 30 years in captivity, according to the World Wildlife Foundation.
    Giant pandas were once regarded as endangered, but were reclassified as a vulnerable species in 2016.
    Births are still significant for conservation efforts, with the animals famously hard to breed and female pandas only able to get pregnant once a year during a 24- to 72-hour window.

    CNN's Jack Guy and Claudia Otto contributed to this report.
    suspicious...
    Gene Ching
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  6. #36
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    Be a Panda Caregiver for a Day

    Gene Ching
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  7. #37
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    fake pandas

    Chinese 'panda' pet cafe raises eyebrows
    By News from Elsewhere...
    ...as found by BBC Monitoring
    8 hours ago


    HONGXING NEWS
    A pet cafe in China's Sichuan province lets people play with dogs dyed to look like pandas.

    ​Animal cafes have been springing up all over the world for the last two decades as a place for animal lovers to enjoy a meal alongside their furry friends.

    But a new "panda" cafe in Chengdu in south-western China - internationally known as the home of the giant panda - is raising eyebrows and a lot of concern.

    According to the Chengdu Economic Daily, a cafe recently opened in Chengdu, seems at first glance to be home to six giant panda cubs.

    But the "panda" cafe is - in fact - all bark and no bite because on closer inspection, it turns out they are actually the Chow Chow breed of dogs, which have been dyed to look like China's national animal.

    'Could damage their fur and skin'

    The owner of the cafe, Mr Huang, says that as well as serving food and drink, the cafe provides a dyeing service.

    He tells Hongxing News that he imports his dye from Japan and has hired special staff for dyeing the dogs.

    "Every time we dye it costs 1,500 yuan [$211; £163]," he says. "The dye is really expensive." He says that this is to ensure the quality of the dye, and says that it in no way affects the animals.

    Hongxing News says that a short video inside the cafe had raised awareness of it nationally and has boosted visitor figures.

    But it has also raised a lot of concern. One vet, Li Daibing, told Hongxing News that he urged people not to dye their pets, saying: "This could damage their fur and skin."


    VCG
    Chengdu has become a popular tourist site for seeing the vulnerable species, and national Chinese treasure: the giant panda.

    'Has become normal'

    Dyeing pets became a full-blown craze in China in the early 2010s, first for competitions, but then amidst a domestic wave of "extreme dog pampering".

    Since, however, there has been a growing consciousness in China about animal ethics and testing. Many of the thousands of social media users commenting on the popular Sina Weibo microblog have voiced their concern about such treatments being used on animals.

    Many call the idea "crazy" and note that hair dye can "damage people's hair and scalp", so could similarly affect a dog.

    But others argue that "it's really cute", and say that they perceive animal dyeing "has become normal".

    It's not just China either - earlier this year, the Latitude Festival in Suffolk was criticised by the RSPCA after a flock of sheep were dyed pink.

    Reporting by Kerry Allen
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  8. #38
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    Bei Bei

    Bye bye, Bei Bei: Beloved giant panda is leaving DC for China in a private jet
    By Theresa Waldrop, CNN
    Updated 9:53 AM ET, Mon November 18, 2019

    (CNN)No cramped leg space and blah entertainment in coach for Bei Bei, the giant panda at the Smithsonian's National Zoo in DC. He's off to China this week -- and he's traveling in style.

    As if flying in his own Boeing 777F private plane dubbed the Panda Express is not enough, handlers will be feeding him his favorite treats during the trip. And the zoo is asking for song recommendations for a mixed tape for the long trip -- just change the title of the original from "baby" to "Bei Bei."

    Smithsonian

    @smithsonian
    If you were a giant panda taking a 16-hour flight to China, what would you want on your playlist? As we say #ByeByeBeiBei with our @NationalZoo, we invite you to change "baby" to "Bei Bei" and share your picks with #BeiBeiMixTape.



    Cassette tape with #BeiBeiMixTape written on the label.
    164
    5:33 AM - Nov 15, 2019
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    "Bei Bei, It's You," and "Bei Bei, Love" were just a few of the suggestions so far.

    Bei Bei was born at the zoo in 2015, and an agreement with China stipulates that all cubs born at the zoo must move to China at age 4, the zoo said on its website. He leaves Tuesday, and his farewell has become quite the affair.


    Baby Bei Bei in September 2015.

    The zoo has been holding events since Monday to mark his departure and fans from all over the nation flocked there to say goodbye this weekend, CNN affiliate WJLA reported. And the zoo is sharing a video of Bei Bei's most memorable moments.
    "Bei Bei is part of our family," said Steve Monfort, a zoo director. "Our team has cared for him, learned from him and, along with millions, loved watching him grow."


    Bei Bei playing at the zoo.

    FedEx has put giant decals of a panda on the plane, just for Bei Bei's ride. He will be the only "cargo" on the direct flight, FedEx said on Twitter -- not counting the 66 pounds of bamboo, snacks and water.
    Even the timing of trip is for his own comfort. His handlers waited until the heat of summer passed so he could be more comfortable on the long haul flight, the zoo said.
    Chinese cafe paints dogs to look like giant pandas
    The agreement between the National Zoo and China is part of a conservation program designed to save the giant panda, listed as "vulnerable" in the wild by the International Union for Conservation of Nature. There are now about 1,800 of them in the wild, the zoo said.
    All pandas outside of PRC are on loan, not just cubs, and can be recalled at any time.
    Gene Ching
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  9. #39
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    nsfw?

    Dutch zoo celebrates pandas finally hooking up by posting sex pic online
    They had been trying to get the pair to mate for two years
    by Alex Linder January 21, 2020 in News



    Azoo in the Netherlands is celebrating two giant pandas finally doing the deed after more than two long years of foreplay.

    Xing Ya and Wu Wen arrived at the Ouwehands Dierenpark in Rhenen in 2017. Since then, the two have lived together in their award-winning enclosure but hadn’t shown any interest in breaking the place in with some hanky place, much to the zookeepers’ distress.

    However, that all changed on Saturday with cameras capturing the momentous occasion. On Monday, the zoo shared a screencap on Facebook for the world to see. Because, as usual, pandas have no right to privacy.

    The zoo will remain in a state of excitement for the next few weeks as keeper’s test Wu Wen’s urine to see if she has become pregnant. Female pandas are only fertile for a few days each year, so this is essentially the pair’s only chance until next year.

    “At the end of last week, we knew Wu Wen was ready and since that moment the keepers have been busy encouraging the animals in a special enclosure,” said the zoo.

    According to Dutch news outlets, that encouragement included dousing each panda’s sleeping area with the other’s urine, training Xing Ya to stand on his back feet, and making the poor guy watch videos of other pandas mating.
    panda porn
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  10. #40
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    Noodles, Pandas & COVID-19

    If there's one thing the Chinese are good at, it's talking in code.

    ‘Noodles’ and ‘Pandas’: Chinese People Are Using Secret Code to Talk About Coronavirus Online
    "Vietnamese pho noodles," anyone?
    By David Gilbert
    Mar 6 2020, 5:35am



    Chinese citizens angry at their government’s handling of the coronavirus outbreak have come up with some ingenious ways to express their outrage and circumvent the extreme censorship measures imposed by Beijing.

    In a bid to control the narrative, Beijing authorities have censored sensitive topics, silenced WeChat accounts, tracked down those who are sharing criticism of the government, and disappeared citizen journalists.

    But all those efforts still haven't silenced people online, and angry citizens are now relying on coded words and phrases to express their dissatisfaction.

    The most common example is “zf” which is the abbreviation for the Chinese word “government. To refer to the police, the letters “jc” are used, while “guobao” (meaning "national treasure") or panda images are used to represent the domestic security bureau. Citizens talking about the Communist Party’s Publicity Department use “Ministry of Truth” from the George Orwell novel "1984," instead.

    One of the ways Beijing has sought to stem the flow of information out of China is by cracking down on the use of virtual private networks (VPNs) as a way of circumventing its censorship system, known as the Great Firewall. So discussing this technology online has also become taboo.

    Instead, citizens have been talking about how to use the technology by referring to “Vietnamese pho noodles” or “ladders.”

    China’s embattled president Xi Jinping is among the most censored topics on Chinese social media. A Citizen Lab report this week showed that WeChat ramped up censorship efforts in recent weeks by adding a number of Xi-related words and phrases to its blacklist.

    In an attempt to get around these restrictions, Chinese citizens have begun referring to their president as a “narrow neck bottle” because the Chinese pronunciation of the phrase is similar to that of "Xi Jinping."

    But despite the obscure nature of this reference, China’s censors managed to pick it up when they removed a question posting on Zhihu (China’s version of Quora) asking “how to wash a narrow neck bottle?”

    “To fully appreciate conversations on China’s social media platforms, merely knowing Chinese is not enough,” an Amnesty International researcher located in China who did not want to be identified told VICE News. “To combat systematic internet censorship, netizens in China have created a new vocabulary to discuss ‘sensitive issues.’ This language keeps evolving as the government constantly expands its list of prohibited terms online. Those not keeping up with the trend could easily be left confused.”

    Part of the reason for China’s strict censorship of online comments is that the government is keen to change the way the world is talking about coronavirus and in particular China’s role in the outbreak.

    Beijing wants to dispel the suggestion that coronavirus is a Chinese virus and instead position itself as the country that saved the world from a much worse situation. China is hitting out at other country’s failure to take the necessary measures to contain outbreaks, particularly taking aim at the U.S. and Donald Trump.

    On Friday, China reported that all new cases of coronavirus came from Wuhan, the epicenter of the outbreak, further bolstering the government’s claims that it has managed to get the outbreak under control.

    But there has been an unprecedented backlash against the government’s attempts to portray the situation in Hubei province as a positive one, and on Thursday that online backlash spilled over into the real world, with a very rare public display of criticism of the government.

    During a tour of Wuhan, a city of 12 million people that has been in lockdown for six weeks, residents locked in their apartments openly berated a senior government official.

    Footage of the incident that has been spread virally online shows residents shouting “Everything is fake” and “It’s all fake” as officials show Vice-Premier Sun Chunlan around the city at the center of the coronavirus outbreak.

    Cover: An employee clad in a protective suit waits on customers at a supermarket in Beijing, China on March 6, 2020. (The Yomiuri Shimbun via AP Images)
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  11. #41
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    Finally some good news

    Goings On
    Our Columnists
    The Miracle of Breeding a Panda Cub During a Pandemic
    By Robin Wright
    August 22, 2020


    The National Zoo used eight hundred million frozen sperm to help its aging panda matriarch, Mei Xiang, defy the one-per-cent chance she would give birth.Photograph by Linda Davidson / The Washington Post / Getty

    In a year of tortured politics, nationwide protests, and a highly contagious pandemic, our troubled republic finally has something to celebrate. Washington, D.C., has a panda cub. Mei Xiang, a mellow matriarch who weighs in at two hundred and thirty pounds, gave birth to a tiny, hairless pink cub weighing just ounces, at 6:35 p.m. Friday, at the National Zoo. The wee panda, the size of a butter stick, introduced itself with a howling squawk. The birth defied the zoological odds—Mei’s advanced age, the life-long failure of her partner panda, Tian Tian, to figure out how to mate, the zoo’s inability to extract fresh sperm from him fast, and, especially, the many complications from the covid-19 pandemic. A week after the pandemic forced the National Zoo to close, on March 14th, Mei began to ovulate. Most of the zoo’s staff were ordered to stay at home or reduce hours. In a race against time, a small team of reproduction specialists—all willing to risk the rules of social distancing—thawed eight hundred million sperm to artificially inseminate Mei, knowing that it probably wouldn’t work. “It’s overcoming the odds, and if there was ever a need for a sense of overcoming the odds, it’s now,” Brandie Smith, the zoo’s deputy director, told me. “People need this. It’s the story of hope, and the story of success, and the story of joy.”

    The average lifespan of a panda—the world’s rarest and most endearing bear—is between fourteen and twenty years in the wild, according to the World Wildlife Fund. (The panda is its logo.) Mei is twenty-two years old. “Given her age, she had less than one-per-cent chance of giving birth,” Smith said. Only one older panda in recorded history—anywhere in the world—has had a cub. She was twenty-three; she lived in China, the homeland of the world’s pandas.

    Pandas are notoriously poor at reproduction, which is one of the many reasons they were long endangered. Today, there are less than two thousand in the wild. To encourage sex, panda handlers in China have even tried giving males Viagra and showing them “panda porn”—videos of other pandas having sex—to the breeding pairs. Females only go into estrus once a year—and only for twenty-four to seventy-two hours. Unlike with humans, and many other mammals, including leopards, gazelles, and antelope, zoologists do not know how to induce or manipulate pandas’ fertility cycles. “We have to wait for nature to take its course,” Dr. Pierre Comizzoli, one of the zoo’s veterinary specialists in species preservation, told me.

    This year’s timing couldn’t have been worse. Helping a panda reproduce is labor-intensive. Just determining if and when Mei goes into estrus is tricky, and even harder during a pandemic. The zoo has to collect her urine—with a syringe off whatever surface she pees on, when the two-hundred-and-thirty-pound bear isn’t looking—to test her hormone levels at the endocrinology laboratory. This year, her hormones peaked on March 22nd, during lockdown.

    The zoo veterinary team had to move fast, because mating wasn’t possible. In 2004, when Mei hit puberty, the zoo tried to get her and Tian Tian to breed naturally. But Tian kept pushing Mei’s body down, rather than lifting it up to penetrate properly. The zoo got creative. It built wooden platforms and tried plastic cylinders to boost her body into the right position. But the two giant bears never did consummate. So the zoo, which has pandas, in large part, to study the reproduction and the preservation of the species, turned to artificial insemination.

    In the past, trying to get Mei pregnant has required two teams employing the same equipment and catheters used for intrauterine insemination of humans—with a catch. “These are wild animals,” Comizzoli, who leads the operation, said. “You have to sedate them. They are big carnivores.” One team would sedate Tian and extract fresh semen. “Always better to get fresh semen, whatever the species,” Comizzoli, who has also successfully artificially inseminated an elephant, noted. A second team would anesthetize Mei, empty her bladder with one catheter, then deposit the semen in her uterus with another. Pandas also have notoriously small uteruses. “It goes extremely fast,” he said. “It takes a matter of minutes to inject the semen.”

    The pandemic changed all that. The zoo assembled only one, smaller team. “This year, we wanted to minimize the number of procedures, so we had to go with frozen semen in our cryopreservation bank,” Comizzoli said. It had been there for five years. To help widen the genetic pool, the zoo has in the past inseminated frozen semen from pandas in China as well as Tian’s semen—double inseminations to increase the odds of a pregnancy. (Some artificial inseminations in China have used semen frozen from pandas who have since died.) But the three cubs Mei has produced since 2005 have all been from Tian’s fresh semen.

    The zoo’s team risked their lives to inseminate eight hundred million sperm cells—from the billions the zoo has stored—hoping that one would reach and fertilize the one or two eggs that Mei produced. The zoo was skeptical. “The truth is that we know, in terms of biology, that after the age of twenty, it’s pretty advanced for reproduction,” he said. “Our female is at that time of life when, yes, there are less chances of carrying a healthy fetus.” Even at a younger age, Mei’s offspring had problems; only three of her six cubs have survived.


    An overhead blackandwhite view of the panda Mei Xiang sitting in an enclosure with hay on the floor after giving birth
    Mei Xiang, after giving birth to her panda cub.Photograph from AP / Shutterstock

    But on August 14th, Mei let zookeepers do a rare ultrasound in exchange for some of her beloved honey water; she usually balks at the latter stage of a pregnancy or pseudo-pregnancy (of which she has had several). It revealed fetal tissue. “We are totally surprised,” zoo spokeswoman Pamela Baker-Masson said, in an announcement. “Reproductively speaking, this is like a miracle.” The pregnancy was big news across Washington, too. Views on the zoo’s popular panda cam soared by twelve hundred per cent. On Friday, after news got out that she was in labor, the system repeatedly crashed.

    Since China gifted the first pair of pandas to the United States, in 1972, the bears have become the city’s unofficial but beloved symbol—replacing both the donkeys and elephants that symbolize the parties that rule (at least technically) from the capital. Over the past week, the zoo set up a nursery, complete with three incubators, outside Mei’s nesting den. They prepared for the possibility of her having twins—and rejecting one. Twice, she has given birth to two cubs and one has died. Panda mothers often will nurse and pay attention to only one cub.

    The contingency plan was to keep one in the incubator and try to swap it every few hours to let her nurse both. “If she has two, our plan is to swap,” Smith told me. “You have to sneak up on a giant panda and reach your hand under her belly and take one of the cubs off her. This is a bear that can crush a femur. It’s a dangerous endeavor.” If Mei refused to nurse one of the cubs, then the zoo would hand-raise it until it was viable on its own. The previous cub, the mischievous and spirited Bei Bei, had a twin, but it soon died despite the zoo’s efforts.

    The future of Washington’s pandas is uncertain. The new cub—whose gender may not be known for weeks—arrived in the midst of contract negotiations with China. The pandas are technically owned by China and leased to the zoo. Mei and Tian originally cost a million dollars a year; now the zoo pays half a million annually. Each cub has to be turned over to China by its fourth birthday, under the zoo’s existing agreement with China. Bei Bei, an adventurous bear who dared fate by climbing high into trees even after he reached two hundred pounds, went back last November. The current lease on Mei and Tian expires on December 7th. The National Zoo, one of the few free animal parks in the United States, has to raise the funds to pay its panda fees to China, plus cover the costs of facilities, staff, food, and panda health care—including artificial insemination. Each panda eats some forty pounds of bamboo a day. For all the celebrating, the new cub was also bittersweet for Washington. “No matter what, this will be Mei’s last cub. It’s the end of an era,” Smith told me. “We’re a little melancholy because these pandas have meant so much to the city, to the zoo, and to us as individuals.”



    Robin Wright has been a contributing writer to The New Yorker since 1988. She is the author of “Rock the Casbah: Rage and Rebellion Across the Islamic World.”
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  12. #42
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    From Endangered to Vulnerable

    Giant pandas no longer classed as endangered after population growth, China says
    Now that the number of pandas in the wild has reached 1,800, Chinese officials have reclassified them as "vulnerable."

    After years of conservation efforts, Chinese officials have declared that giant pandas are no longer "endangered," but are still "vulnerable." Drew Angerer / Getty Images file
    July 9, 2021, 6:53 AM PDT
    By Christina Ching Yin Chan
    HONG KONG — Giant pandas are no longer an endangered species, Chinese officials have announced, in a massive win for conservation efforts in the country.

    The number of giant pandas living in the wild has reached more than 1,800, meaning the species has been reclassified as “vulnerable,” Chinese officials said earlier this week.

    The new classification comes after Beijing “carried out some major activities and measures to protect biodiversity and achieved remarkable results,” said Cui Shuhong, head of the Ministry of Ecology and Environment, at a press conference Wednesday.

    It is notoriously difficult to get pandas to breed both in captivity and in the wild.

    He also credited tightened law enforcement supervision and a major crackdown on illegal activities on nature reserves.

    Experts say China managed to preserve the animals, considered a national symbol, by taking measures that allow humans and pandas to coexist.

    Becky Shu Chen, technical advisor at the Zoological Society of London, pointed out in a phone interview that most of the nature reserves are so huge that there are still populated human villages inside them.

    She credited the Chinese government with teaching villagers agricultural activities that did not destroy the panda's natural habitat, such as in Changchun, the home of a panda zoo, where locals sold “panda honey.”


    Giant panda Bei Bei eats in its enclosure at the Bifengxia base in Yaan, Sichuan province, in 2019.AFP - Getty Images file
    The villagers “protected the home of pandas, which is one of the reasons that they are now downgraded to ‘vulnerable,’” said Chen.

    In China, the giant panda has long been considered a national treasure and has been a protected species since the implementation of the wildlife conservation law in 1958.

    This isn’t the first time the species has been reclassified. In 2016 the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) reclassified the animals from “endangered” to “vulnerable” on the global list of species at risk of extinction.

    Chinese officials bristled at the move at the time, maintaining that the animals were still under threat and the conservation efforts were not at a point where they could be relaxed yet.

    Chinese social media users were pleased with this week's news, saying it was not only proof that conservation efforts had paid off, but also an indication of the economic success of China.

    “With our country getting wealthier, we have money to put on environmental and animal protection, just like what the Western countries did,” wrote one person on Weibo, China’s most popular social media platform.
    Good news.
    Gene Ching
    Publisher www.KungFuMagazine.com
    Author of Shaolin Trips
    Support our forum by getting your gear at MartialArtSmart

  13. #43
    Not gonna lie, I start loving pandas when I watch Kungfu panda. lol

  14. #44
    Quote Originally Posted by highlypotion View Post
    Not gonna lie, I start loving pandas when I watch Kungfu panda. lol
    Same here. I've recorded seventy-some episodes of it and 3 movies. Hope they make more...

  15. #45
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    Pandas!

    Gene Ching
    Publisher www.KungFuMagazine.com
    Author of Shaolin Trips
    Support our forum by getting your gear at MartialArtSmart

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