Panda Habits

Giant pandas are by nature solitary animals, for most of the time avoiding direct contact with others of their own kind. But at crucial stages in their lives pandas, like all solitary mammals, are forced to spend time with each others. In spring males and females must seek each other out in order to mate. And in autumn the females give birth to a single cub which will be their constant companion for the next 18 months or more.

Giant pandas generally avoid contacting with each other in the wild. In their dense habitat their coat may help make animals conspicuous to each other and prevent them from surprising themselves by approaching too close to another of their own kind.

Pandas signify aggression by lowering their heads and staring at their opponents. To signal submissiveness, a panda will put its head between its front legs, often hind its eye-patches with its paws. This position is adopted by females during mating, and also by captive animals that are being harassed by humans--particularly vets with anaesthetic darts. At close range aggression is signaled by a swipe with a paw, or by a low-pitched growl or bark that will send an opponent scampering up the nearest tree.

In the second century AD the giant panda was a rare and semi-divine animals inside China. In the Han dynasty (206 BC-AC 24) the emperor's garden in the then capital Xian held nearly 40 rare animal specials, of which the panda was the most highly treasured, and the poet Bai Juyi (AD 772-846) credited the panda with the power to prevent disease and exorcise evil spirits. Panda skins appear scattered throughout the Chinese imperial records, as gifts or tribute on great occasions of states. But the animal was totally unknown outside the secretive "Middle Kingdom" until the declining Qing Dynasty was slowly forced to open its doors to trade and Christianity towards the end of the nineteenth century.

Christian missionaries played a central role in making Chinese wildlife known to the West, collecting plants and animals from the areas around their missions and sending them back to their native lands.

Captive Breeding

Giant pandas usually range over a large area, covering distance of more than a kilometer every day, but captive-bred giant pandas and as cubs often adapt well to life in a cage, apparently enjoying the company of their keepers and happy to perform for the public.

Attempts to breed pandas in captivity in China began in 1955, but it was not until eight years later, on 9 September 1963, that Ming Ming, the first ever captive-bred giant panda, was born in Beijing Zoo. This historic event promised a new era of security for the species-at least in captivity. Li Li, the mother of Ming Ming, proved to be a model parent, cradling the cub in her arms day and night and responding to his every squeal. In September 1964 Li Li gave birth again, this time to a female named Lin Lin, and a year later a second female Chiao Chiao gave birth to the third Beijing cub, a male called Hua Hua.

Chinese government set up some special research centers to improve the captive breeding, such as Wolong Research Center and a panda breeding facility near Chengdu, one much large than the one in Wolong.

In 1991 a worthwhile effort resulted in seven pregnancies and births of nine young of which five survived. But twenty-three females had come into heat, showing that the gap between the potential and actual number of birth is still great.

Whatever the number of pandas surviving in the wild, it is quite clear that the giant panda will become extinct in the next century unless more steps are taken to protect its habitat. It is estimated that the giant pandas now exist in about 35 isolated populations and that most of these contain fewer than 20 individuals.

To ensure the survival of pandas, the Chinese government issued a National Conservation Management Plan for the Giant Panda and its Habitat" The Plan has Contents:

- Reduction of human activities in the panda habitat
- Removal of human settlements
- Modification of forestry operations
- Control of poaching
- Rehabilitation of habitat
- Management of bamboo habitat
- Extension of the panda Reserve system
- Achieving outbreeding between panda populations
- Maintaining a captive population
- Release of captive-born pandas into the wild

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