“Pandas” Helping Pandas

I read this great article on Neatorama and just had to share it with you guys! It’s about researchers dressing as pandas in order to successfully introduce cubs to the wild. Enjoy!

It may look as if they have escaped from a Disney theme park or a children’s party, but underneath these furry giant panda costumes lurk some of China’s leading conservationists.

The dressing up is just not for fun, say scientists, but an essential part of China’s ambitious strategy to reintroduce captive-bred Giant Pandas back into the wild.

A researcher dressed in a panda costume puts a panda cub into a box before its physical examination at the Hetaoping Research and Conservation Center for the Giant Panda in Sichuan province Photo: REUTERS

It is not yet clear if the Pandas are fooled by the disguises, but researchers at China’s Wolong Panda reserve in Sichuan Province, say that captive-bred cubs must live devoid of all human contact if they are to have any chance of survival.

Earlier attempts at reintroducing captive-bred pandas to the wild ended in disaster in 2006 when Xiang Xiang, a male cub who was supposedly trained to adapt to life in the wild, was found dead 10 months later, apparently killed by other wild pandas.

In a new strategy, earlier this year conservationists released four pregnant Pandas into a protected area of Sichuan forest in order to prepare their future cubs for life in the wild.

Researchers at Wolong’s Hetaoping Research and Conservation Center take the temperature of a four-month-old cub…
Photo: FEATURE CHINA / BARCROFT MEDIA

In these pictures researchers at Wolong’s Hetaoping Research and Conservation Center take the temperature of a four-month-old cub before carefully returning him to the ‘wild’ where he is monitored by 24-hour CCTV.

Although notoriously fussy when it comes to mating, China has in recent years made great strides in its captive-breeding panda program, and this year attained the “magic 300” number of captive-bred animals, the target for starting to reintroduce them to the wild.

…before carefully returning him to the ‘wild’ where he is monitored by 24-hour CCTV Photo: FEATURE CHINA / BARCROFT

The innovative methods used to encourage the pandas to procreate – including, artificial insemination, special diets, ‘sexercise’ classes and even Viagra – are the subject of a BBC documentary narrated by Sir David Attenborough to be screened this week. [BBC Two, 8pm, Tuesday Dec 7th] The film, Panda Makers, for which a crew spent two years filming at the Giant Panda breeding centre in Chengdu, China, shows the moment when the 300th panda was born.

Photo: FEATURE CHINA / BARCROFT MEDIA

However, for all the successes, the giant panda remains seriously endangered, with less than 2,500 in the wild as their already shrunk natural habitat has shrunk by 50 per cent in the last 20 years as a result of China’s pell-mell economic development.

I hope this actually works! It’s incredible how the other pandas must know something isn’t “right” with the human-raised cub. I wonder how they know? What do you think?

You can view the original article here.