Feeding baby pandas in china

How to Hold a Baby Panda in China

When you tell someone you’re going to China, they always ask about two things: pandas and egg rolls. Turns out that egg rolls were most likely invented in New York City and are practically impossible to find anywhere in China. However, panda bears are native to south central China and there was zero chance that I was going to miss an opportunity to hold a baby panda bear.

There is literally one place in the entire world where you can hold a baby panda bear and it’s at Dujiangyan Panda Base and Center for Disease Control which is two hours outside of Chengdu, China. Chengdu, a four hour plane ride from Shanghai, is the capital of Sichuan Province. It’s known for incredibly spicy food and being the birth place of Po, the panda bear from Kung Fu Panda.

Young Panda Bear in Sichuan Province

I booked a flight to Chengdu on Spring Airlines for $70 roundtrip. Everything that a luxury airline is, Spring Airlines is not that. Spring Airlines is a low-cost, no-frills private airline based out of Shanghai. Imagine boarding an airplane to an instrumental version of Oh! Susanna on repeat, having no legroom, and only a backpack because you can only have a single carry-on without paying extra. That’s Spring Airlines.

What the airline lacks in luxury, it makes up for in character. On every single Spring Airline flight I have ever taken, I made friends with the passengers sitting next to me. Despite not sharing a language, they were always willing to share their food, music, or technology with me.

Spring Airlines Passengers are friendly

There are multiple panda bases around Chengdu. At the time of this blog post, there is only one that allows you volunteer as a “Panda Keeper” and actually hold a baby panda. Make sure you arrange with Dujiangyan Panda Base and Center for Disease Control to get the full experience.

To get to and from the base, I hired Leon (a private driver I found on TripAdvisor) to pick us up at our hotel, drive to the pandas, and to a few attractions around Chengdu. Leon charged about $100 for an entire day of being a tour guide. It is possible to get to the base using public transportation. As anyone who has attempted to use a bus system in a language they don’t speak can attest, it’s a risky endeavor that requires substantial extra time and planning. I didn’t want to waste any time and Leon was a fun person to spend the day with.

Feeding Panda Bears

It’s important to arrive at the base when it opens (around 8am) because that’s when the panda bears are most active. For 700 Chinese Yuan or about $100, the base allows you to be a “Panda Keeper for the Day”. The base staff go all out to provide you with an amazing experience and really commits to treating you as if you are an actual zookeeper. You’ll be given a zookeeper coverall (which makes for great pictures) and given a private tour of the base. The pandas are the cutest thing you will ever see, you’ll take too many pictures, and never want to leave.

After the private tour, you will be taken to clean the panda cages. When you’re cleaning up Panda poop for a hour is when you decide that you’re glad you’re not actually a zookeeper. It’s also when you wonder why you are paying $100 to clean up Panda poop. Once you get to feed the panda bears bamboo shoots, you forget about cleaning the cages and start calculating if you have the finances to stay at the base forever. You also get fed lunch, shown a documentary, and taught how to make panda food.

Highlight of My Life

The highlight of the day and possibly the best moment of my life is when I got to cuddle a baby panda bear. The experience is not cheap. It costs about $350 to cuddle a baby panda for about 60 seconds. It is worth every penny. There is literally no other place where you can wrap your arm around the cutest creature in the world and get the best profile picture of all time. The money also helps Panda conservation efforts. It’s a win-win and you will not regret it.

To ask me questions and keep up with my latest travels, follow me on social media: Loganbrown799 (Snapchat, Instagram, Twitter) or check out my blog: loganbrown799. com

Before You Go

Vanderbilt 2018

Popular in the Community

How to Hold Baby Pandas in China

For the second time in five minutes, the teenage girl beside me asked her mom if her hair looked okay. Less than thrilled with her curls for the day, she put her compact mirror away and turned to me.

“I’ve always wanted to do this,” she said.

Her mom went on to validate what her daughter said: She has always loved pandas and has dreamt of cuddling one for as long as she can remember.

A few minutes later, the girl sat down by her mom on the wooden bench, and her dream came true. A baby panda, chomping on an apple, was placed onto her lap.

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It may seem like an oddly specific dream, but I shared it as well. The minute I found out that there was a place in Chengdu, China, where visitors could hold pandas — no, baby pandas — my heart jumped. I reverted back to elementary school — carefree days adorned in my memory by Day-Glo pandas patterned on my notebooks and binders.

These days, I get uneasy about tourism that involves animals, but this is a Chengdu must-do, operated by the Chengdu Giant Panda Breeding Research Foundation. The non-profit organization was founded in 1987 with six giant pandas rescued from the wild, and it has grown to more than 100 pandas from this founding population — a significant number when you consider that there are only about 1,600 giant pandas in the world. The group’s efforts to support scientific research, breeding and cooperation among domestic and international groups have even been recognized by the United Nations Environment Program’s Global 500 Award for environmental achievement.

Humane and unique, it’s no surprise why one of the foundation’s main projects — the Chengdu Research Base of Giant Panda Breeding (Chengdu Panda Base) — is listed as the number-one activity on TripAdvisor. com for the city. In addition to being able to hold a giant panda cub at the Giant Panda Nurse Experience Station, visitors to the reserve can spend hours leisurely strolling the gorgeous grounds of the base which continue to expand and receive renovations. Because of the size of the grounds, the pandas here are not locked in cages. Instead, they have spacious, enclosed natural areas in which they can sprawl out, sleep and eat — the three activities you will see the pandas do. I watched a panda chomp on bamboo for about 10 minutes, and I’m not sure what was more impressive — how mesmerized I became or the panda’s supreme dedication to its craft: eating. I only broke my gaze when I realized that, nearby, two other pandas were covered in various bamboos and feasting near a tree. I walked around the different enclosures, admiring the assortment of postures which pandas employ while eating and sleeping.

Giant pandas were my main mission, but I spotted other animals without even trying: Above me, on the roof of the giant panda nursery, a peacock modeled its plumage and surveyed the scene. At my feet, the endangered red panda scampered through its enclosure area’s fencing onto the visitor’s path en route to a dense field of trees. And near the entrance of the base is Swan Lake, where white and black swans offer guests an elegant welcome. Nearly 400 trees, including the city’s tree — the Ginkgo Biloba — adorn the base, and a cinema, a gift shop, a museum, restaurants and informative signs throughout the park provide details about the reserve’s pandas and conservation efforts. But, if you’ve come to cuddle a cub, don’t get too sidetracked.

For some personal panda time, be sure to go straight to the Sunshine Nursery and sign up. It’s best to arrive around opening (8 a.m.), especially in the summer. The pandas are most active and likely to be outside in the early, cool feeding hours. Also, the visiting experience is capped to a limited number of guests per day so as not to exhaust the baby pandas. It’s not possible to reserve the visit ahead of time since the base cannot guarantee the pandas’ cooperation.

After signing up for the nursery experience, groups of six attend a briefing, where a staff member shares some panda facts while showing skeletons of the panda’s hand and wrist, as well as photos. Then the group goes outside to take turns washing bamboo before putting on the appropriate clothing: gloves, plastic booties over shoes and a long, blue plastic overcoat.

The staff works diligently to ensure that each person’s once-in-a-lifetime moment with the panda is appropriately captured. During my turn, three staff members — one with my iPhone, one with my camera and one with the center’s camera — all kept telling me to look up. I was entranced with the six-month old in my lap, petting its head and legs and simply reveling in the baby’s wanton enjoyment of food, the weight of its growing body and the wiry texture of its hair nuzzled against my chin.

Chengdu Research Base of Giant Panda Breeding
http://panda.org.cn

Know Before You Go:
Admission fee:
$9. 50

Donation to hold a panda:
$327

Included:
A memento photograph, a hooded jacket, a donation certificate and a panda documentary

Hours:
8 a.m. – 6 p.m.

Giving birth to a panda in Japan has been waiting for a quarter of a century

July 06, 2012 21:18

An event that all of Japan has been waiting for 24 years has taken place at the Tokyo Zoo. Giant panda pair Xing-Sin and Li-Li have a baby. Parents belong to China, and in Tokyo they decided to call their Japanese panda Sen-Sen or Kaku-Kaku. And they were offended by this in China.

An event that all of Japan has been waiting for 24 years has taken place in the Tokyo Zoo. Giant panda pair Xing-Sin and Li-Li have a baby. Parents belong to China, and in Tokyo they decided to call their Japanese panda Sen-Sen or Kaku-Kaku. And they were offended by this in China. Both names are derived from the disputed islands of the Senkaku archipelago. But while politicians swear, ordinary Japanese rejoice at pandas.

All of Japan has been waiting for this moment for almost a quarter of a century. Giant panda births remain a mystery even to experts. It is impossible to predict them. 7-year-old Shin-Shin kept zoo staff on their toes for a week. Everyone breathed a sigh of relief only after the healthy cry of the baby was announced in the cage.

The birth of a panda is like the birth of a crowned person. In Japan, this is news number one. Several times a day, journalists at press conferences report on the condition of the baby and mother. According to the director of the zoo, the main thing for them now is complete peace and good food.

"You have to be extra careful during the first week. The baby hardly leaves the mother's breast. It's important to make sure that you feel well and don't stop breastfeeding," explains Tokyo Zoo director Toshimitsu Doi.

The panda is not only a symbol of the Tokyo Zoo, but also of good relations with China. The first pair of bamboo bears was brought to Tokyo in 1972 as a sign of the normalization of contacts with Beijing, but the animals continued to be the property of the PRC. The Japanese pay about a million dollars a year in rent.

For 40 years, Tokyo has been trying to get its own panda, but overseas guests stubbornly refused to breed on Japanese soil. And finally, this moment has come.

Under an agreement with China, in two years the panda cub will finally acquire Japanese citizenship.

"We are so happy that after 24 years we finally have a baby panda. We can't wait to see him," says a Japanese woman.

"He must be so pretty! We are terribly happy. We would rather show him," a little zoo visitor is looking forward to seeing a panda cub.

But it won't happen so soon. Before the cub stands firmly on all four paws and learns to confidently chew bamboo, at least six months must pass. Meanwhile, the queue for the panda enclosure at the Tokyo Zoo is still the longest.

While the mother is taking care of the baby in a closed enclosure, all the attention of the public is riveted on the happy father, who seems to be fully aware of the joy of fatherhood. For more than one month, he will have to take the rap for the whole family alone, and to the best of his ability, in his own way, he demonstrates his attitude to the general hype.

6-year-old Li-Li has an excellent appetite. The burden of fame obviously does not weigh him down. He became a father just a year after arriving in Tokyo. And the Japanese hope that he will not be limited to one heir.

in the world news

90,000 Panda cubs in captivity in China are deprived of their mother's milk. What does it threaten? - ET

Forty years after the giant panda population declined to an all-time low, experts around the world are trying to create a self-sustaining population in captivity to release pandas into the wild. /epochtimes. ru/

This was difficult to do for many years as the institutes were unable to work together and follow the recommendations of genetic scientists and breeders. In China, the home of giant pandas, the number of cubs is a priority for breeders, as competing ministries responsible for panda numbers pay for each cub born in captivity.

There are concerns that panda breeding is going in the wrong direction. Captive cubs have health and behavioral problems that reduce their ability to live in the wild. This is exacerbated by the difficulties involved in reproducing the giant panda.

We have just published a new study on panda milk and panda feeding that shows that human interference can negatively impact animals. Chinese panda breeding centers heavily supplement or even completely replace mother's milk with artificial milk, citing the fact that this gives the cubs the best chance of survival and rapid growth.

Conditions for breeding pandas in other countries vary depending on the nature of the contract with the Chinese authorities. In many cases, they are required to have a Chinese employee who will constantly watch the panda. In this case, all overseas zoos must follow the Chinese feeding method. However, the Vienna Zoo does not mix panda milk with artificial milk.

The mystery of colostrum

Milk is especially important for giant pandas due to the extreme immaturity of the newborn cub. All panda bear cubs are born more developmentally immature than the cubs of any other non-marsupial mammal. Of the seven bear species, giant panda cubs are the most immature.

Newborn pandas weigh only 100-150 grams, about one-thousandth the weight of a bear. They do not have a functioning immune system, they cannot see or hear, and they cannot regulate their body temperature. They are born without fur and are completely dependent on their mother for every aspect of survival and development.

The body of a mother, female or female mammal, produces colostrum, which is secreted by the mammary glands before childbirth and in the first days after childbirth, similar in composition to milk. It contains unique, specific nutrients essential for the newborn's immune system, as well as proteins and lipids that are vital for development.

In animals that are born quite mature, such as calves and foals, the colostrum phase only lasts a few hours. But for giant pandas, the transition from colostrum to milk must take an unusually long time to meet the developmental requirements of immature newborns. When we analyzed milk samples from six giant pandas, it turned out that the colostrum phase lasted 30 to 40 days.

We also found that the composition of panda's milk varies considerably with the period, with some ingredients first appearing in large proportions and then decreasing in quantity, while others in small quantities and then increasing dramatically. Some of the most notable changes involve molecules that are the building blocks of the eyes, brain, and nervous system.

Other fluctuating ingredients are integral to biosynthetic pathways, cell membranes, antibacterial defenses and microbial development in the digestive system of cubs. These microorganisms may be especially important for giant panda cubs as they transition from milk to a predominantly vegetarian diet during their first year of life. Their intestines must be able to digest large amounts of bamboo, which is the basis of their diet.

We also analyzed artificial milk formulas given to panda cubs in zoos and breeding centers. It turned out that the levels of key nutrients were grossly inadequate, some too low, others too high. Their number did not change, as the mother's colostrum changes to meet the needs of the developing panda's body.

Artificial milk contained excess lactose, which is abundant in cows and other animals but disappears from panda colostrum a day or two after birth. Lactose causes serious stomach problems and disrupts the delicate balance of micro-organisms in the guts of panda cubs. Moreover, this can continue and interfere with the digestive processes of the animal in the future.

We have also identified deficiencies in other key compounds in artificial milk, which can negatively affect the development of the brain, eyes and other organs of cubs - this is a serious risk, given that the ultimate goal is the release of captive-bred individuals into the wild.

Evolutionary Wisdom

In the wild, she-bears devote a lot of time to raising and training their cubs in order to adapt them sufficiently to independent life. Our research has shown that panda cubs suffer because breeders do not allow panda mothers to raise and raise their cubs in peace.

Every hour zoo or breeding center keepers disturb the peace of pandas, animals live in desert enclosures where mothers are not provided with privacy and control over the habitat. At the age of three to five months, captive cubs are permanently removed from their mothers to maximize the chances of female bears giving birth every year. This is very different from conditions in the wild, where cubs stay with their mothers for two and a half years or more, and panda bears give birth every four to five years.

If we want to create a population of captive-born pandas that are physically, cognitively and behaviorally healthy, breeders must give this up to panda mothers.