Animal pop stars
The Panda House at the Taipei Zoo is fully enclosed in soundproof glass, so that the pandas are not disturbed by sounds or filming by zoo visitors. They can carry on climbing trees and eating fruit with leisure and contentment in a world that is all their own. James C.H. Chang, who heads up the committee overseeing panda reproduction at the Taipei Zoo, says that during the summer the temperature in the panda enclosure is kept below 26°C, whereas in the winter they open the enclosure so the pandas can get some outdoor activity. At that time the temperature can fall into the teens, so that the pandas still feel the change of seasons, to make their enclosure more similar to a wild environment.
On peak days nearly 20,000 people come to see Tuan Tuan and Yuan Yuan. The Panda House limits the flow of visitors to a rate of 400 every ten minutes.
The two pandas, who just recently turned nine years old, became proud parents in July.
When Yuanzai was born on the evening of July 6, she was only 15.5 centimeters long and weighed a mere 183.4 grams. She was completely hairless, and looked more like a tiny mouse. There was nothing remotely “bearish” about her.
Yuan Yuan’s “blessed event” has been a tremendous thrill to the zookeepers. Considering that pandas are rare and endangered, everyone was extremely proud and delighted about Taiwan being able to add a new individual to the population.
The panda is considered to be a “living fossil.” Its population reached its peak back in the mid to late Pleistocene epoch, 500,000 to 700,000 years ago. But as a result of environmental change and hunting by humans, numbers declined sharply. Statistics from mainland China indicate that today there are only about 1600 pandas living in the mountain forests of the provinces of Sichuan, Gansu, and Shaanxi. Another 300 or so are being raised worldwide in manmade surroundings.
With its natural habitat swiftly being lost and fragmented as a result of deforestation and the death of large swaths of bamboo, “ex-situ captive breeding” has become the essential last line of defense for the panda.
Aside from the main base of panda reproduction in Sichuan, the task of building up the panda population falls to pairs of pandas given by mainland China to cooperating institutions in other countries, including the US, Mexico, Austria, Germany, Japan, Spain, and Thailand.
The birth of baby Yuanzai has added a new celebrity to the Taipei Zoo, and sparked a surge in sales of panda peripherals.