Chengdu Panda Adventure - by Stephanie

Chengdu Panda Adventure - by Stephanie

March 23, 2007

I’m glad that the people of China care about this animal species

Visiting the Giant Pandas in Chengdu, China was one of the highlights of this trip for me. Giant Pandas have long been my favourite animal, so it was special to visit them in their home and natural environment. Having seen the beautiful black and white pandas live, I’ve come to love them even more.

The Chengdu Research Base of Panda Breeding is on the northern suburbs of Chengdu. It took a while to get there because our lost driver did not want to surrender and say that he was lost. He just kept driving along, up and down, right and left, along the streets for about an hour. Finally realizing that the Panda Center will not come to him, he wisely asked a road side director where this Panda Breeding Base was. After about another half hour, we arrived and joined the rest of our tour group. The three hour tour that we took wasn’t long enough for me.

In the enclosure called the Kindergarten there were panda cubs playing around and wrestling each other. I noticed that the young cubs were very flexible and had a soft body to land on every time they fell off of the wooden playground. It was really fun to watch a trainer play with the cubs. How can anybody know each panda from another? All of them had black ears, black eye patches, black arms and legs and a black shawl around their back. The rest of the body was white. They all look the same to me. One time, the trainer tickled a baby on his stomach while on a platform. The startled cub jerked up and floop, fell face first onto the lower playhouse. He lay face down there for a while and the trainer checked to see what he was doing. The little panda then decided to get revenge and hopped up and proceeded in playfully biting the trainer in the leg and grabbing onto him with his front paws. But humans are quite a bit faster than a young cub and the trainer managed to escape. They little cubs love to follow the trainer around to get his attention and play games of tag. I could have stayed there and watched them forever.

The adults were too lazy to play around. They just kept on eating their bamboo shoots while resting their backs on logs. They looked like big fat couch potatoes munching on snacks while watching TV. One of the pandas was peeling her bamboo before she ate the shoot. I wonder why she did that while the others ate the outside layer too.

This species of pandas was once said to be carnivorous and feasted on small prey. Now these gentle animals’ main diet is the bamboo shoot. There is an ‘extra’ thumb on their already 5 fingered hands. The ‘extra’ thumb is to help grip the round bamboo stem. The thumb is actually stationary and the panda moves the other fingers.

The Giant Panda’s time to mate is from March to May and the cubs are born about 6 months later. The size of a new born cub compared to its mother is like humans giving birth to a matchbox. Sometimes the mother ends up stepping on her tiny baby. Inexperienced mothers can also be frightened of this small, pink, screaming creature. 45% of the time, the Giant Panda will give birth to twins often rejecting one and leaving it to die. The newborn cub of this animal has not fully developed and the eyes, ears and some internal organs still have to develop after birth. These big, but quiet bears eat a non-nutritional food and because of this, most of the bamboo runs straight through their system and comes out the other end almost in the same form as it went in. Because only 1/5 of the food the panda eats is used in the body, it has to eat almost constantly and moves very little. About 16 hours a day are spent eating and the rest is spent sleeping.

The Giant Pandas were once abundant throughout the forests of China. Due to the poachers and loss of habitat there are now only about 1000 of these cuddly little teddy bears.

God’s creatures are big and small

And the pandas are

All so alike but yet very different.

Gentle and loving, caring for their young,

Eating tough bamboo all day long,

You can hear their happy song.

Those eyes are so mysterious,

So bashful and cute,

With a mask of black.

Despite their big teeth, they are actually a little meek,

Furry coats, velvety noses.

Made not to put on a tether,

Making coats and selling leather,

Poachers and hunters are not a good thing.

What they do for fun makes their weapons sting,

Those contraptions catch innocent teddy bears,

This population has wavered and is close to dying,

Really it’s true, I’m not lying,

But thanks to the Chengdu Panda Research Center,

There are those who help raise and mentor

The next panda generations for all of us to enjoy.

I’m glad that the people of China care about this animal species. It makes me smile whenever I see a baby panda. They are so funny to watch when they are in their playful mood. Watching the trainer and the baby pandas makes me rethink what I should be when I grow up.