While you were out: Panda Edition
Rebecca Bauman
Issue date: 3/29/07 Section: Opinion
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This Tuesday, biologists at the National Zoo in Washington, D.C., announced they will attempt to artificially inseminate Mei Xiang, the zoo's only female panda. The sperm of Mei Xiang's pseudo-suitor, a male panda named Gao Gao, was recently retrieved from the San Diego Zoo in California and flown first-class across the great US of A. (Not for nothing, Gao Gao was placed at the top of an exclusive list of global panda-breeding recommendations from a 2006 giant panda-breeding conference in Thailand - he is the most eligible panda bachelor.) Exciting, yes? I can barely control my bladder for the anticipation. Indeed, it's a great time to be a panda, or, more accurately, it's a great time to be a panda lover. In the past 10 days, at least seven stories have hit the world news wires promoting pan-panda tales. But has it really been a busy two weeks for pandas, or just a slow two weeks for people? Has all world news dried up entirely to make way for these popular panda-related headlines? And why pandas? Why not hagfish? Surely, there's gotta be some rhinoceros news we can dredge up ... Maybe y'all can figure out just what's so great about pandas (other than their too-cute exteriors and near-mythic presence on the endangered species list). Here's a round-up of my favorite panda stories from the last week: Panda porn a blow for mating concerns Authorities at the Chiang Mai Zoo in northern Thailand have been providing Chuang Chuang, a 10-year-old China-born panda, with video images of other pandas having sex - items now dubbed by the media as "panda porn." Chuang Chuang's keepers hope the footage might encourage and even instruct the otherwise indifferent male to mate with his partner, 9-year-old Lin Hui. The panda porn seems to have had little effect so far on the zoo's male ward. Still, chief veterinarian Kanika Limtrakul reported on Tuesday that the video series will continue ... just in case something - anything - might stir in Chuang Chuang. Pandas, which have been threatened by a vastly low reproduction rate and a disinclination among the species to breed in captivity, have long been dwindling in the wild. There are fewer than 1,600 pandas remaining in the forests of central China, and habitat loss as well as poaching continue to make an impact on the panda population. Oddly enough, Chiang Mai Zoo employees have suspected that it might not necessarily be a lackluster interest in sex that has prevented Chuang Chuang from mating, but, instead, that he is too obese to muster the energy. (The panda was recently put on a diet that delivered him from a weight of 331 pounds to 313 pounds.) Panda dung to be recycled for paper Staffers at Chengdu Giant Panda Breeding Base in the Sichuan province of southern China are looking for paper mills to process their mounting surplus of panda dung. Breeding base researchers were struck with the idea of turning the animals' excrement, which is high in fiber, into paper while visiting Thailand last year; many Thai animal sanctuaries produce homemade paper items from processed elephant dung. The base's researchers say that this project would simply be a matter of good will, that it is the center's wish to recycle panda dung to reduce waste, not increase profits. Forty bamboo-fed pandas (including local favorites named Jing Jing, Ke Bi and Ya Ya) produce an estimated two tons of excrement at the breeding base each day. And though it is not yet certain exactly how much two tons of panda guano yields in the way of paper, researchers insist that, thanks to a cleaning process that involves boiling dung in soda solution, bleaching and then sun-drying it, consumers probably won't even be able to tell just where their panda paper is coming from. Panda death 'stuns' Berlin Zoo staff Only four days after an initial media blitz surrounding the "coming out" of an infant polar bear cub named Cuddly Knut, the mysterious death of a 22-year-old panda named Yan Yan has snatched the attention of a bereaved German public. Nearly 30,000 zoo patrons had been making their way through the Berlin Zoo's gates each day since Cuddly Knut's debut, and it is suspected by some that the influx of visitors could have "stressed" Yan Yan to the point of coronary failure, pandas being renowned for their shy dispositions. The Berlin Zoo's spokespersons have said that Yan Yan's keepers were "stunned" by the sad find - Yan Yan had been dead for some time, alone in her pen, unnoticed for the excitement surrounding Cuddly Knut. You know, maybe it isn't such a great time to be a panda. These recent stories highlight not only the commercialization of what were once legitimate attempts at wildlife conservation, they highlight the obsessive, near-unhealthy lengths we are willing to go to for the sake of our black-eyed, bashful buddies. But there has got to be a line. I don't need to see every panda portrait on the Web, don't need to be notified every time a panda sneezes, don't need to be drawn into the psychotic things humans are doing in the name of panda preservation and unadulterated panda-monium. While recognizing that pandas are in trouble and that their entire existence has been put at risk due to human encroachment, we should not and must not become so fascinated with these creatures that they are transformed into our own massive Cabbage Patch Dolls. Twenty-four-hour panda coverage borders on degradation of the entire species - and just because they're rare, just because they seem cuddly does not make them worthy of their own E! reality series. What happens with this kind of fascination is eventual consumer burnout ... and when the numbers of these once-loved creatures dwindle, perhaps the best of us will have nothing more to report than: "Good riddance. I'm so friggin' sick of pandas." |
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