Pandas

I’m not quite sure what came first – the idea to come to Sichuan and see the pandas while I’m here, or to come and see the pandas and spend some time in Sichuan. Either way, I saw them at the Chengdu Panda Research Base – Gav missed out as he managed to catch some kind of flu bug. He wasn’t all that bothered about seeing them anyway, saying they’re completely useless animals, so how’s that for karma? However, there may be some truth in his words…

It's nigh on impossible to see pandas in the wild a) cos there's not many of 'em left and b) cos they're highly unsociable animals who prefer to keep themselves to themselves. They don't even like other pandas much. Having evolved from meat eaters to vegetarians who only eat one very special type of bamboo found only in China (evolution really could have been cleverer there), their bodies are only able to absorb around 20% of the roughly 15 kilos of bamboo they eat every day. The bamboo they eat lacks pretty much any nutritional value whatsoever so they're prone to hyperthermia due to their shoddy immune systems and have to sleep all day to conserve the little energy they are able to get from their food. So they don't like mating much cos it's far too energetic. Being unsociable, they live in very small groups in the wild so interbreeding is a problem, which further impairs the success rate of breeding.  So from what I can gather, in an ironic twist of the usual world order, the panda would be completely screwed if it weren't for humans.

The Chengdu Giant Panda Research Base is heavily involved in finding ways to get the pandas to mate and also has an artificial breeding programme. We saw the results of this on our visit - babies tend to be born between August and October so there were five tiny little babies at the base when I went. No pictures allowed though – boo! They are generally taken away from their mothers soon after birth because, as if the giant panda didn't have enough problems already, female pandas often have no mothering instincts and bat their baby around as if it were a toy, trample or sit on it or even eat it. Some pandas get it the second time around and naturally pick up their young and lick them clean. The staff at the base give natural birth a chance (which can also be tricky cos apparently there's no fixed time for a panda's gestation period so knowing when the birth is going to happen is a bit of a mare) and if the mother shows signs of aggression towards her young in the first few minutes after birth, the baby is taken away and kept in an incubator. I think they let the mother feed it and reunite them full-time after a few months.

The park is nicely laid out, it just looks like a forest, albeit a landscaped one. There are no cages and the pandas appear to be allowed to roam free. The place is divided into enclosures which must limit their movement, but the enclosures seem pretty big and seeing as pandas spend a lot of their time up a tree asleep, how much land do they need? We never saw more than four or five of them together so there wouldn't seem to be an issue with overcrowding either. I'd say that as lives in captivity go, this one is worlds better than being stuck in a zoo, especially if it's a Chinese one. Beijing Zoo used to sell pellet guns which you could fire at the monkeys. Nuff said.

Whatever the reason was that made me go and see the pandas, contrived setting or no, I’m really glad I did. Unforgettable. I have over 200 pictures to prove it, mostly of the back of pandas heads so you have got the highlights!