Fun Panda Facts
23 apr 07
Yesterday I visited Zoo Atlanta to see their new baby giant panda, Mei Lan (“Atlanta Beauty”). Mei Lan currently lives in a small, glass-enclosed and climate-controlled habitat with her mom, Lun Lun. She’s pretty rare: the cub is just the fifth to be born and raised successfully in a US zoo. You have to purchase special, timed tickets for a viewing (above and beyond general admission), which lasts ten-ish minutes. Zoo workers relate all kinds of fun facts during that time, and I thought it was really interesting. Here are some things to know.
Mei Lan is *really* cute. You can check out the pictures or view the cam, but it doesn’t compare to seeing her in person. I highly recommend it, and it’s worth the extra fee.
Only four US zoos have giant pandas. They are the San Diego Zoo, the Memphis Zoo, Zoo Atlanta, and the National Zoo in Washington, D.C. All of them have giant panda cubs now except for Memphis. Losers!
Giant pandas are really expensive. All giant pandas are on loan from the Chinese government. Zoos lease the pandas for a ten-year term, feed them, house them, and perform scientific research on them. For this privilege they pay at least a million dollars a year. It wasn’t clear from the talk yesterday whether this was per panda, but with some Wikipedia-ing it appears that it is.
Mei Lan is a test tube baby. Though zookeepers have tried to get Lun Lun and Yang Yang (Dad) to mate naturally, it never happened. Lun Lun was artificially inseminated and gave birth to the tiny (about the size of a stick of butter) Mei Lan after 35 (!) hours of labor.
Mei Lan is Chinese. Even though she was born in the US, she’s owned by China. Generally, after a few years giant panda cubs return to their homeland, where they would attempt to mate Mei Lan with a male panda. Apparently Zoo Atlanta hopes they can keep her a bit longer, though, because part of the zoo’s agreement with China is to study babies’ relationships with their mothers.
Eric / 24 apr 2007 / 8:14 p.m.
I’ve seen the San Diego pandas. Unfortunately, that’s when my camera’s batteries decided to die, so I didn’t get many photos.
There’s a DC/political blog called “Wonkette,” and many of its readers wanted to name the DC panda “Butterstick” when its name was being sought. They still refer it as such on the site, and it has its own tag for entries: http://wonkette.com/politics/butterstick/
tim / 25 apr 2007 / 7:15 p.m.
I went to the San Deigo Wild Animal park about a month ago, they had a new baby elephant. It was only 5 days old and was huge. Probably the cutest thing I have ever seen.
Did you know that elephants are pregnant for something like 23 months, thats crazy.
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Meredith / 24 apr 2007 / 12:24 a.m.
Cool. Now I really CAN get rid of the TV I haven’t turned on in three weeks, because I’ve got Nova on notmyself.com!
:) No really. Pandas are cute. I need to make it to our zoo sometime this year. It’s a pretty good zoo for being the city that we are.