It might be ironic because I am Chinese, but I love giant pandas! The bamboo loving creature is indeed my spirit animal. It was my favorite animal toy as a child, and one stuffed toy accumulated into, oh, about thirty. And I will never give one away. As a college adult, my child obsession hasn’t diminished a bit, but my interest in giant panda’s was resurrected by a photo set of adorable panda antics:
The cub is thankfully okay, perhaps a little shook though. He was one of 23 pandas successfully bred at the Chengdu Research Base of Giant Panda Breeding in 2016 and in an effort to rebuild the panda population. It’s amazing how far giant pandas have come, but how did they get this way and what are the results?
National Geographic breaks down the giant panda breeding process and it’s three big complications. The giant panda is not only a rare animal, but it’s first and foremost hard for them to mate them. The mating season for pandas is once a year, and females only have two or three days to conceive. Second, female pandas have a complicated biology that hinders easy gestation. A fertilized panda egg will not implant immediately in the uterus, which is unusual for mammals, and it can take several months until an embryo begins developing.
The third complication is the easy deaths of baby pandas. Thankfully, this is something that nurturers can prevent. Giant pandas often bear twins, and in a twisted sort of nature, the mother will choose only one to feed and nurture. Care takers have solved this by practicing cub swapping, or letting the mother take care of one cub at a time while human caretakers give attention to the other. Another cause of death was something only recently discovered — blind baby pandas would die of constipation. So when the baby pandas are in human care, they are carefully massaged to help the baby pandas have bowl movements.
These amazing innovations and discoveries about the giant panda has demoted the breed to be no longer endangered! In 2014, it was recorded that the panda population increased an amazing 17%, raising the total panda census to 1,865 in the wild. These adorable creatures are still ‘vulnerable,' but we are one step further in saving the giant pandas from the threat of extinction.
