Giant Pandas - bullied and exploited for politics
When you watch some funny video compilations on the internet with Pandas falling down trees and rolling down hills endlessly, you might think they are not quite equipped for living in this world. Humans on the internet in the last decade certainly have formed an opinion that Giant Pandas are just meant to go extinct, that they are not build for survival and it’s a miracle they are still around. See some proofs here, here and here. And indeed, their survival was threatened in the past.
In this post I want to explore how it came to be why giant Pandas suffer from human misunderstanding and what effect this still has on us and them.
| Giant Panda - a picture book teddy bear |
The Giant Panda's magical allure
So what is it with Giant Pandas (Ailuropoda melanoleuca)? Why do we cherish them so much? These animals seem to be the unicorn of the animal world, a super model for highlighting conservation programs and marketing, in contrast to other animals. They have totally captured our attention and admiration.
Well for starters, Giant Pandas are cute, they do resemble our beloved teddy bears from our childhood, with their black, round beady eyes, a big forehead and their chubby proportions. Actually, their black-and-white face markings and those big, round ears remind me a bit of Mickey Mouse. And also a bit like a baby, humans are imprinted on baby faces which results in an evolutionary advantage, so we as a race would find our offspring cute and subsequently care for them. The Panda certainly falls into this category.
And their whole behaviour, the clumsiness, the chill-out, human-like seated, eating position and their playful and peaceful nature just seem to have us in awe and maybe... maybe brings us back to childhood or a desire for a more peaceful lifestyle.
But then, eating bamboo all day and only bamboo wouldn't give you enough energy to do something else then digesting your food and occasionally falling down from trees.
But does our conservation effort on Pandas just mirror our selfishness? Do we just save animals when they are cute, pretty or gigantic? What kind of purpose or role in the ecosystem does a Panda actually have? That was the question I asked myself.
The Panda's role in the ecosystem
First, they are so iconic (they mark the WWF logo as well) that they act as an umbrella species for the whole forest and the life in it, including less admired animals and plants. Conversation efforts mostly concentrate on charismatic species, as they draw more attention and empathy from humans and will gather better monetary results. If the Pandas get attention and survive in their natural environment, subsequently all the other inhabitants of the forest, like monkeys, red Pandas, different birds, not to mention reptiles, amphibians and invertebrates, survive too.
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| Panda eating bamboo |
Secondly, Pandas eat a lot of bamboo . Bamboo leaves, especially young ones, contain cyanide which is toxic, so the bear’s body is busy breaking down the toxins for a big part of the day.
During their life they wander around and obviously need to poop at some point which spreads the bamboo seeds in the same process. So by moving around they actually enable the forest to re-grow and spread.
💡From an evolutionary standpoint it is an omnivorous bear converted to a mainly vegetarian diet
Ironically, their teeth arrangement still resembles the typical bear denture, but their main food is bamboo. Their whole digestive system, which was build evolutionary to digest meat, has now evolved to digest plant matter. So from an evolutionary standpoint it is an omnivorous bear converted to a mainly vegetarian diet. This is pretty astounding if you ask me. A detailed essay can be found on one of my favourite YouTube channels here.
Don’t be fooled, they still complement their plate with eggs and small animals. It also means their teeth are still sharp and combined with a strong jaw, this makes the Giant Panda still a dangerous animal.
A lot of attacks have been reported where people didn’t respect a proper distance to the animal or just underestimated their usual peaceful nature, either in their natural environment, or just people crossing over enclosures in zoos. Have a search result, I won't link any upsetting videos or reports here. Still stands the point that Pandas are big bears with big teeth and powerful jaws.
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| Panda paw with the false thumb |
Giant Pandas have also developed a "false" thumb along their 5 digits to better grab bamboo and being able to walk comfortably among the forests. An amazing evolutionary adaption.
How did humans get the wrong impression?
Human perception of the Giant Panda is a long story of misunderstanding and mistakes on the human side in the 20th century.
The first Panda Su-Lin arrived in Chicago Zoo, US in the late 1930s, right in the middle of the Great Economic Depression, to relieve the people with her charm and charisma. It was followed by two more animals soon which heightened the hopes for Panda offspring, once they would mate. But nothing happened, all under the public eye. No wonder, all three of them were male 💥.
A similar fate fell upon the Bronx Zoo, where both Pandas were unknowingly female. Since male and female Panda genitalia look quite similar, the human mistakes went under the radar at that time and build the first stepping stone of the myth of the sexually incompetent Panda.
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| Panda climbing a tree. Hope it doesn't fall. |
In the 60s a female Panda named Chi-Chi from London Zoo was one of the only two Pandas outside China, the other one a male called An-An residing in Moscow. In the midst of the Cold War both Zoos made their efforts to transport Chi-Chi to Moscow in hope of mating attempts between her and An-An. But Chi-Chi- wasn't interested, even fighting him. The London Zoo had to give a statement that her year-long captivity and contact with keepers resulted in a somewhat strange imprint on uniformed keepers instead. Another stone for the myth.
Other mating failures happened in more zoos which is also due to the fact that these animals are only fertile for 1-3 days in a year which presents a ridiculously tiny opportunity window. On top, female Pandas are able to absorb the foetus which acts as a sort of birth control in the wild.
The many, failed mating attempts are not surprising, considering how different a concrete enclosure is to a natural forest. Obviously, it smells and sounds different and is probably missing the right triggers. It was observed in the wild that females will climb a tree and groan disturbingly loudly to attract potential mates. Arriving males will compete among each other with pissing contests and handstands. Pandas have scent glands at their bottom and will try to set a marking highest up the tree with a handstand. The whole process of mating will be observed by young Pandas too, so that they learn how to do it once they matured.
All these nuances in behaviour and triggers are missing in an artificial environment. Instead, conversation success was achieved with artificial fertilisation 💥.
The double-edged sword of conversation success
Since the mid 1970s, population surveys have been conducted. As the population dropped in the mid 80s by 50% to around 1,200 individuals, a conversation program was established by the Wildlife Protection Act. Luckily, conservation efforts for the Giant Panda were quite high, in fact way higher in comparison to other animals. China launched a massive breeding program (fuelled by the widespread popularity of the baby-face Panda) and managed to raise their numbers in captivity so that these animals are no longer considered threatened.
China also has given Pandas to zoos all over the world, but the ownership comes with a twist: zoos don't own the Pandas they showcased, they are only leased in collaboration with the Chinese government, like I learned myself while visiting the San Diego Zoo or Berliner Zoo in the past.
💡 Zoos have to pay 1 million USD per year for the lease of an animal
Keeping a Panda in a zoo will undoubtedly attract visitors, but these animals require a maintenance more costly than many other big animals. Cubs born outside of China are not property of the zoo or country they have been born in, the Chinese government still holds ownership. Depending on the diplomatic situation, it will lend Pandas to foreign countries, if the government is in favour, and it will demand them back if it is not.
- In 2010, after disproval of the Chinese government about a meeting between US president Barack Obama and Dalai Lama, two US-born Pandas named Tai Shan and Mei Lan had to be returned to China.
- The Edinburgh zoo has been given Pandas in 2011 in exchange for a trade deal about Scottish Salmon, renewable energy technology and cars.
- At the same time, Norway lost its salmon deal after two decades, supposedly after Norway gave the Nobel Peace Price to China dissident Liu Xiaobo
Politics or costs are reasons why many zoos in the last years have returned their animals. Not sure whether all that money goes straight back into conversation programs in China.
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| Current and historic range; taken from https://wwf.ca/species/giant-pandas/ |
The IUCN lists the Panda as vulnerable (that's better than endangered) with around 1000 species in the wild. Still, that's too few for a wild animal. Several hundred animals are bred in captivity where they might never learn the rituals of a natural panda life.
My personal take
In my opinion there is only one solution to save the Panda is to give it its habitat back. Stop the logging and poaching, simple as that! With so many animals bred in captivity, I wonder whether these animals can ever be released into the wild again and whether it's just the case that we are just breeding a “pet” version of a Panda unsuitable for the wild. Some reintroductions into the wild have been made, but not all of the individuals survived long enough and were instead mashed up by their own kind.
It’s outrageous that the Chinese government is unable or unwilling to protect and restore their habitat, and at the same time using the animals' status as a hefty price tag for diplomatic, international relations.
And while the world has gathered immense resources to save one animal for our selfish delight and probably only for captivity, other species have faced neglect. Have a listen to this podcast episode if you want an expert take on this.
I better leave it with that. I hope you learned something on the way as I have asked myself these questions a while ago and ended up writing this post. A detailed account about our relations to Pandas can be read in Lucy Cooke's Unexpected Truth about Animals, which helped me a great deal to fortify the historical points here.
Please consider donating to an animal charity of your choice. Let us wish all the best for the Giant Panda's future.
If you want to feel inspired about the animal kingdom, feel free to read my book presentation of "Animal Kingdom" by Jack Ashby here.
Thanks for reading, Andi Pasti
Links and Resources:
- https://www.allcreaturespod.com/episodes/episode-62-popular-panda/
- https://www.iucnredlist.org/species/712/121745669
- https://bestofpanda.com/why-are-pandas-important/
- Lucy Cooke, The Unexpected Truth about Animals, 2018
- https://www.reuters.com/world/china/what-is-chinas-panda-diplomacy-how-does-it-work-2024-06-18/
- https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-cost-of-saving-pandas/id1081584611?i=1000602945570
- https://youtu.be/mLi1Ex9t128?si=qIpUg23fOHFLHEYY
- https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-24161385
- https://www.bbc.co.uk/worklife/article/20190516-why-paying-for-pandas-is-not-so-black-and-white
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