Pandas are the most loveable nearly extinct animals in the world.

I mean who cares if some insect goes extinct because of human environmental meddling?
Or a certain breed of snake or something?
But everyone cares if the Panda goes extinct… because I mean look at it, so adorable.
This is probably why it’s the poster-animal of the World Wildlife Fund.

Panda research is done in China, where most of the research gets put into making these loveable idiots breed.

You see Pandas seem to lose interest in mating once they’re in captivity.

And whilst everyone knows that Pandas are renowned for eating nothing but Bamboo, it was my mum on a recent trip to Chengdu and to the Panda breeding centre that asked the question, “well they seem to be very much like normal bears, they still have meat-eating teeth, so can they just not eat meat anymore? Or can their stomachs only handle Bamboo?”

She asked this to our bus driver and to the local guide that we had who works for the centre.

“Oh yeah, to be honest they can eat meat, and in fact a lot of the Bamboo they eat doesn’t get fully digested.”

With my mum’s questioning eyes, he continued  “oh yeah, but the meat makes them more aggressive, so we prefer not to feed them meat”

My mum and I just looked at each other utterly surprised.

More aggressive? Wait, so you’ve been making them docile on purpose, feeding them something that they can’t even digest properly, and then you wonder why they don’t have the energy for sex?

They don’t have the energy for anything.

At least give them a bit of meat, an aggressive horny panda is surely better than one that only wakes up for munching on some bamboo and then rolls over and goes back to sleep.

How about you put a little more research into that element huh?

You can read about this online, it’s true. Pandas were never hunters, but they did eat meat by scavenging, perhaps that was enough before to make them somewhat reproductive.

 

Also the first time I went to this Panda breeding centre just outside of Chengdu there was a mini-museum walk-around paying homage to the Giant Panda, and like many Chinese things they collected a bunch of information from all sources and put it together, they made some sort of timeline out of it, but didn’t pay too much attention to the details.

There was a picture and beside it was a caption stating the quizzical statement ‘Nobody knows why the Pandas seem to die out’  and in the picture was 4 men carrying a Panda inside a supposedly hard bamboo cage all wearing hats made out of Panda fur.

The next picture along was ‘The traditional uses of Panda in Chinese medicine’

Yeah, I’ll tell you why their numbers are so thin, probably these 4 guys wearing dead pandas on their heads ahd quite a bit to do with it.

And where are they taking that particular Panda do you think?  Across to the next picture so they can make some virility medicine?
Let’s hope this is when the Pandas were at least still eating meat.

Now… the centre has conveniently removed these pictures, most likely because many foreigners were taking pictures of them and secretly laughing.

I’ll try to find the picture.