Here it is, simply called Panda.
The western world first saw a live giant panda only half a century ago. And 50 years from
now, this idolized animal could be extinct. If this happens, it's we humans who'll be
largely to blame. The story of how the worldwide love of the panda began is hopelessly romantic.
It involves war, smuggling, and high society. But the panda's story is also tragic. It's
an animal which has evolved into a peculiar and precarious existence, unable to cope with
interference. The plight of the panda has become a symbol
for the thousands of species which are under daily threat from human activities. If we
can save the panda, then perhaps we can create enough awareness of our delicate environment
to protect the less attractive animals and plants, which will otherwise disappear very
soon. Which means the story of the panda is also one about the struggle of scientists
to understand an animal which is so secretive in its natural habitat that we know little
of its behavior in the wild.
It's as if we've always known the panda. Yet, it could disappear in our children's
lifetimes. Why do we have such an attachment to an animal which we've only been able to
see alive for part of this century, for only three generations?
It's as if we've always known the panda. Yet, it could disappear in our children's
lifetimes. Why do we have such an attachment to an animal which we've only been able to
see alive for part of this century, for only three generations? Well, perhaps it has something
to do with the fact that the giant panda is a set of contradictions. It's strong, yet
exquisitely vulnerable. Vulnerable to interference with its surroundings, vulnerable to extinction,
and vulnerable in the way you just want to reach out and cuddle one. It's almost replaced
the teddy bear in affection.
President Teddy Roosevelt was a great hunter, but on one trip he couldn't bring himself
to shoot a baby bear. The cartoonists of the day had a lot of fun and created the symbol
of the teddy bear, later to be exploited by a soft toy company. How teddy bears, or Teddy
Roosevelt, are connected with the giant panda, you'll discover later. But certainly the black
and white bear is a serious competitor for children's love.
There's an ancient Chinese story of how the panda's markings came about. In this remote
and inhospitable wilderness, a young shepherdess, friend to all the pandas, died whilst trying
to save a baby panda from the teeth and claws of a leopard. The pandas who loved her were
so moved by her courage that they arranged a very special funeral ceremony. All the pandas
wept at the loss of their beloved shepherdess, and their tears stained their eyes and bodies
black. The shepherdess was transformed into a mountain, which today stands like a monument
where the giant pandas roam in the wild.
And that's how the giant panda came to look so sad.
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Janet's obsession is getting out of hand. Janet, this is taking over your whole life.
It's very easy for you. You've got no idea. You think you know it all, but you don't know
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Oh no, actually Dad's not coming home. He got held up at work.
Oh, I think you're fantastic. How will Jill react?
Richmond Hill, Wednesday at 7.30. Even in the 1920s, virtually only Chinese people
had seen the animal in the wild. So the ambition of many rich white adventurers was to find
and shoot a giant panda for one of their museums back home. And their starting point was Shanghai.
Shanghai in the 1920s was called the Paris of the East. In about 100 years, the city
had grown from a village to one of the largest collections of humanity in the world at that
time. The British and French used Shanghai as if it were their own. Because of the arrangement
they had with the Chinese, they didn't have to obey local laws. Each nation had its own
tradition of celebrating the day of the
day. Each nation had its own police force and legal system. There were few tariffs on
imports or exports, and a passport was often just a formality which could be ignored by
corrupt officials for a price. In such a place, espionage, crime, political intrigue and fabulous
profits from coolie labor were commonplace. And, needless to say, men and women who'd
been misfits or an embarrassment at home found new identities in this peculiar and frantic
corner of China, where opium was almost as easy to obtain as a cigarette. So Shanghai
was the obvious place for the giant panda hunters to obtain their supplies and porters,
and set off on their long and extremely dangerous expeditions. But how did they come to know
about this unusual beast? To find that out, we have to go first to an animal with a similar
name, but a fairly different appearance. Europeans discovered the lesser, or red panda, about
160 years ago, about half a century before the West knew there was such a thing as a
giant panda. The word panda, by the way, comes from Nepal, on the other side of the Himalayas
from the giant panda's Tibetan and Chinese home. The habitats of both pandas overlapped,
which, as we'll discover later, could explain why the animals seem so alike, yet may not
be related at all. A red panda actually came to London Zoo in 1869, only to survive a few
months. Naturalists thought that the red panda came from the raccoon family, and there were
learned discussions about it. Parts of the panda's behavior and appearance were like
a raccoon, but others like a bear. Yet cute though the red panda, or cat bear, as some
used to call it, cute though it was, we human animals didn't fall in love with it the way
we did with the giant variety. The reasons were probably to do with the lack of media
in the 19th century and the less imposing stature of the red panda. It's ironic that
just as the first red panda in captivity died, a French priest unknowingly was preparing
the giant panda for the limelight. Given the popularity of the giant panda nowadays,
it's surprising to find that the animal was new to the West in 1870, and not many
Chinese were aware of it either.
Abbot Armand David was a Lazarus missionary from France. He had such an impressive knowledge
of the animal and plant kingdoms that the Paris Museum of Natural History asked him
to collect rare specimens for them whilst the priest was doing his holy work in China.
Père David, as he came to be known, was a good naturalist, and in unexplored parts of
China and Tibet he found many new species. But what he was famous for in his own lifetime
was his description of the Baishong, or white bear.
Père David never saw a giant panda alive, but one day in panda country a local hunter
showed him a curious skin. The fur was rather coarse and mostly white, apart from curious
black patches over the eyes, black ears and black limbs. At first sight it looked like
a bear. Analysis of Père David's specimens suggested that the animal was more closely
related to the red panda than the bear, and that's how the Baishong became known as the
great or giant panda. This was probably an error since the giant panda may indeed be
a bear after all. But panda or not, it was clearly a new beast to tempt white hunters,
and a species which museums, particularly in the United States, wanted to have on display.
So the hunters and explorers continued to come to Shanghai, which by the 30s was a changed
city. Centered on Shanghai, China was in turmoil. The city was the birthplace of Chinese communism
and thus the focus of the revolutionaries violent opposition. Some of the worst massacres
of communists took place in Shanghai. In this embattled city, Chiang Kai-shek's nationalists
were fighting the Reds, and both were fighting the invading Japanese. But remarkable though
it seems, the foreign sectors of Shanghai were left alone by and large. Amidst the carnage,
the British, French and American inhabitants pretended everything was normal. Therefore,
China's agony made little difference to the invading panda adventurers. It was just a
minor inconvenience compared to the challenge of bagging a giant panda. In Shanghai, the
adventurers found coolies, guides, food, weapons and other necessities. Some of the tribal
territories the foreigners passed through were not only hostile as far as the environment
was concerned, but dangerous because of potential attack by the aboriginal people and bandits.
This is rare archival film of some of the inhabitants who lived near the territory of
the giant panda. This particular expedition developed good relations with the locals and
were allowed to observe their many rituals. It was thousands of miles from the coast to
panda country near the Tibetan border in Sichuan province. They had to travel up China's great
rivers such as the Yangtze. This required permission from the authorities, which was
often not even requested by the hunters. The boat journey took them through some of the
unhealthiest regions of the world. China was known at that time as the sick man of Asia,
with diseases like bubonic plague being quite common. If the foreigners survived that, then
eventually they had to set off on foot for the more remote areas. And conditions became
even worse if that was possible after the explorers reached the mountains where the
panda lived. It was and is very difficult to find a giant panda in the wild, even for local
hunters. The animals live at an altitude of more than 2000 meters in almost impenetrable
bamboo forests, above which is the equally inhospitable Rhododendron jungle. Pandas also
spend most of their lives alone, so they are scattered thinly. But for those who wish to
become one of the few white men to shoot a giant panda, these sorts of challenges only
increased the attraction, and some came back with a trophy. The first recorded whites to
shoot a giant panda were the sons of former president Teddy Roosevelt. So the sons of the
father of the teddy bear gained maximum publicity for the animal which would later usurp the
soft toy industry. But naturalists were frustrated with only skin and bones to examine. They
wanted a living panda.
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The eyes of the world are on Australia for the opening of the biggest international event
ever staged in the Southern Hemisphere. World Expo 88, a once in a lifetime experience that
will stand as testament to man's achievements. Hosted by Kerry Ann Kenley and Tim Webster
and proudly brought to you by Coon, YoPlay and Cadbury, World Expo 88, the opening celebrations
commence Saturday morning live and exclusive to Ted. It capturing a panda and bringing
it thousands of miles back to Europe or the United States was a task which had been beyond
some of the most fearless explorers of the day. But the person who was the first to bring
out a live panda wasn't a big game hunter, wasn't an explorer, wasn't a man. She was
a New York fashion designer. In December 1936, Ruth Harkness disembarked at San Francisco
with the world's first captive panda, baby Sue Lynn. Both Ms. Harkness and her panda
cup made international headlines and a rather mini giant panda brought the species to public
awareness and admiration. But even after all these years, the story of how Ruth Harkness
caught Sue Lynn is still unclear. Ruth Harkness' husband had died in Shanghai after failing
to find a panda. Ruth, on hearing of his death, said she not so much lost a husband but gained
an expedition. She hired a local guide and went off into one of the coldest, most bandit
ridden parts of the country. She was to have an arduous and dangerous journey up to near
the Tibetan border and returned some time later with a baby panda. The Chinese authorities
were upset that Ruth hadn't asked for permission to go into such dangerous country and in the
end the animal was smuggled out to America as a dog worth $20. Ruth Harkness gave the
story that they'd found the little one in the bamboo forest. But there were allegations
that she'd poached the panda from another hunter. Nonetheless, America went wild at
the arrival of the first giant panda. Everyone was intensely fascinated by Sue Lynn and she
eventually arrived at Brookfield Zoo Chicago, which financed Ruth Harkness to return to
China for a second panda, Mei Mei. The zoo's turnstile overheated with the attraction of
two giant pandas. But the partnership was not to last. Sue Lynn died when a piece of
wood lodged in her throat. She ended up stuffed in the Field Museum of Natural History in
Chicago, but not before they discovered that cute little Sue Lynn had been a he all along.
And so before the war, the world became fascinated with the giant panda through what was nothing
short of kidnap. The sad sequel is that after all this, Ruth Harkness couldn't keep herself
in the limelight. And a decade later, she died an alcoholic alone in a hotel room. In
the 50 years or so since Sue Lynn got off the boat in San Francisco, the attention over
the plight of the giant panda has shifted to China. Zoos, of course, love having a panda,
because not only does such a rare animal bring prestige, but vast crowds of paying visitors.
But in that same 50 years, it's also become clear that the giant panda is under extreme
threat of extinction. No one's quite sure how many of these animals are left in the
wild. The most optimistic estimates are around a thousand individuals. The most pessimistic,
less than 600. So the 12 panda reserves in China and those zoos lucky enough to have
pandas have the enormous responsibility of trying to conserve this beautiful species.
And in order to do this, scientists need to know a lot about what the panda is, how it
behaves, and how its body works. Yet although we've had all this time, we still know very
little about the giant panda. We know it spends most of its time eating bamboo. We know the
giant panda is a mammal. It's warm-blooded and suckled its young. It's also a carnivore.
Bamboo is not the giant panda's only food. It can eat meat. But from here, the description
of the giant panda becomes confusing because scientists disagree as to which family it
belongs. The raccoons, the bears, or in a panda group with just two members. Part of
the confusion comes from the colloquial name for the animal, namely panda. By calling it
a giant panda, scientists have occasionally assumed a relationship with the lesser or
red panda, which probably doesn't exist. It's tempting to say that animals are of the same
family just because they have superficial similarities. For instance, the red panda
looks like a raccoon and behaves somewhat like one. The giant panda, whilst having some
unique features in common with the red panda, looks and behaves more like a bear. The problem
for those who classify species is that the environment can make animals look alike.
Because species have to evolve to survive in the same surroundings, they often share
the same features without necessarily being related. For instance, the Tasmanian tiger,
now extinct, or phylociene as it's called technically, had an appearance similar to
a dog or wolf, but it was much more closely related to the kangaroo than its lookalikes
in Europe. The phylociene looked like a wolf because it also had to run long distances
and hunt, and a wolf-type body is a most efficient design for these activities, whether they
be in Australia or Transylvania.
Almost certainly the giant panda belongs to the bear family and isn't related to the red
panda at all. But that's really only of academic interest, because above all the science we
need to know concerns why the giant panda is under threat, since under threat it certainly
is. Living at such altitudes and dense forests of bamboo, the giant panda doesn't have many
mates and so has adapted to a leisurely life of munching stocks 12 hours a day. It may
be leisurely, but it's rather precarious and inefficient. The panda has huge muscles attached
to its skull, plus specially evolved teeth to deal with all this chewing. But its digestive
system, its stomach and intestines, has not adapted well, so the panda passes large and
frequent motions because it only absorbs a small amount of bamboo, hence the constant
feeding. But the way the panda feeds is one of its most endearing features. It has almost
a human posture as it sits and uses its paw to bring the stocks to its mouth. And to do
this requires a very special grasp, permitted by the panda's unique thumb. The famous panda
thumb is not a sixth finger, but the enlargement of a bone in the wrist, which moves in a similar
fashion to the human thumb.
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LA Law, eight thirty tonight on ten.
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Has existed for at least three million years. Panda fossils have been found across all this
area of China. But today this huge territory has shrunk to a few small regions in western
China which are reducing still further. The problem is that humans in China vastly outnumber
pandas and humans are being moved into the giant pandas habitat swelling the numbers
of people of Tibetan stock who already live there. And all these families need homes and
food. The need for agricultural land and wood has been so great that the pandas bamboo forests
have been and are being destroyed. The pandas precious bamboo can't grow unless there's
adequate tree cover above it. Pandas are also very shy and retreat from human settlements
even if there is food around.
So the pressures of logging and farming mean that the areas which are available to pandas
are becoming much smaller and more isolated. Less forest implies less food for fewer and
fewer pandas. And isolated areas of bamboo forest mean that the pandas have nowhere else
to go if there's a local catastrophe. Because if something happens to the pandas cherished
bamboo then a catastrophe is very likely which is just what happened in the mid 70s and again
in 1983 when the bamboo flowered and died off. This is a normal phenomenon and occurs every
few decades but is a disaster when the pandas numbers are so low.
The Chinese government has created 12 panda reserves the largest of which is this one at Wulong.
These panda reserves are an attempt to set up an effective conservation program for giant pandas
and their habitat. Wulong is both a facility for captive pandas and a center for field research.
For instance there's an American Chinese research project which is trying to discover more about
the pandas habits in the wild. They track the panda electronically since it's an incredibly
timid and elusive animal. It lives by itself on less mating. And the pandas infant rearing
practices are so intensive that it's unlikely a female can raise more than one cub every
three years. But even in the reserves logging and farming still threaten the pandas environment.
At Wulong 3,000 people compete with only 100 pandas. Wulong is jointly funded by the Chinese
government and the World Wildlife Fund. It's basically a breeding facility where captured
pandas are lovingly cared for and monitored. The scientists and keepers need to know as
much as possible about their charges so that they can keep them in the best of health and
also so they can recognize the moment a female giant panda is in heat and ready to mate.
This so-called estrus can last only a day or two which means the keepers have to move
quickly and bring a breeding pair together who are otherwise kept apart. Some of the
pandas like this one with a neck scar were brought here because of injuries due to another
threat to their survival. Pandas often become caught in illegal traps designed for prized
musk deer. The laboratories at Wulong support a comprehensive range of research projects.
Some of the scientists are investigating the hormones and chemical changes which are
involved in pandas sexual and mating cycle. This might help the researchers to predict
when the animals are ready to get together or assist the pandas in having a successful
pregnancy. The workers at Wulong also have an interest in artificial insemination. Other
investigations are into the problems of bamboo die-off after its periodic flowering. They're
trying to see whether the pandas will eat other varieties. If the pandas do like the
bamboo, it will be planted in the area. So the situation is dire. In the animals present
living areas, even including the reserves, only a small fraction of the territory can
be called suitable for survival. If you add to that the problem that pandas won't live
near human settlement, then it's easy to understand the awful plight of this beautiful species.
And the way the pandas are split up doesn't help their prospects for survival. Pandas
seem to be living in 35 separate groups of around 20 each. Now it doesn't take much
to knock off a population of 20. A few accidental trappings, a reduction of food supply, or
a sterile male are all potential and imaginable disasters. On top of that, one of the keys
to survival is reckoned to be what's termed genetic diversity. Genetic diversity means
that you don't have closely related animals breeding together. One of the risks of inbreeding
is that a group of animals can inherit the same susceptibility to infections, for example,
and thus a simple virus could wipe out the whole population in a very short time. And
some experts reckon that the giant panda is already dangerously inbred. For instance,
all the recent litters in captivity in China stem from only three males and ten females.
The duty of zoos is to breed the panda rather than just show it off, but they have enormous
difficulties to overcome, not the least being the terrible death rate amongst infant pandas.
Of 51 captive births in 20 years in China, only 19 survived more than two months. And
if all this wasn't enough, recent Chinese research suggests that pandas may have a sperm
defect which hampers fertility.
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The experience of the National Zoo in Washington, DC is an example of how difficult it is to
breed giant pandas. We've managed to obtain rare footage of the zoo's attempts with their
parents, Ling Ling and Jing Jing. The Chinese gave Ling Ling and Jing Jing to the United
States after the visit of Richard Nixon to China in 1972. One of the great challenges
in panda breeding is sex education. It's hard to teach a panda what he or she should do
by instinct. Captivity can affect whether pandas are attracted to each other. Sometimes
the pandas fancy their keepers more, which isn't surprising. Pandas see more of humans
in a zoo than they do of each other. And for all we know, that's what captive pandas think
pandas look like. And when the time comes, the males aren't sure what to do. Of course,
Ling Ling finds it extremely irritating that the only male panda from miles around is totally
inept.
The keepers first have to recognize when the female is in season and ready to mate. This
allows them to bring the pandas together, since otherwise the animals are kept apart
for most of the time. As with humans, female pandas reach sexual maturity before males.
Ling Ling didn't reach her prime till she was over six. The typical female only has
eggs ready for fertilization and thus comes into heat once, or less commonly, twice per
year, in spring and maybe autumn. When in heat, the animal loses her appetite, makes
more noise, becomes restless, marks certain spots with scent, and when ready will lift
her tail for the male, even if he hasn't much of a clue about the whole thing. In the
national zoo, Ling Ling would take frequent baths and even cover herself in soil, perhaps
to acquire some local scent. Another curious sign in female pandas of being ready to mate
is walking backwards whilst making bleating noises. All these signals tell the male that
the time when the female will receive him is imminent. This preparatory period gives
the best chance of something actually happening, because the female is only receptive to the
male for a very few days, perhaps only once per year, and in the wild that may only be
once every two or three years. In Washington, the female panda Ling Ling is often boss.
Ling Ling makes sure she's in charge and fends off Jing Jing when she's not prepared to mate.
But sometimes when she shows Jing Jing that she is ready, he's not sure what to do. In
fact, he's a bit pathetic, and it took Jing Jing a few seasons to learn the facts of life.
Foreplay, at times, was tantalizing, to say the least.
But the attempts by Washington Zoo to get the pair to mate didn't work out, so the zoo
decided to try artificial insemination. In 1980, a team of 13, which included a doctor
from the local children's hospital, anesthetized the male panda Jing Jing to obtain some semen.
The technique used by the zoo to collect semen from Jing Jing is called electro-ejaculation.
As you might imagine, it's an awkward process, and in the end the animal's sperm count was
too low to be of use. So they had to go to the freezer and thaw out semen the zoo had
gathered the year before. And once back in liquid form, the semen was drawn up and introduced
into a now anesthetized Ling Ling. But all this effort came to nothing, and the zoo had
to wait till 1983, when the animals mated properly and Ling Ling became pregnant.
Five months later, Ling Ling began preparing for the delivery. No outside visitors were
allowed, and this extraordinary film is the main record of what happened. Here, Ling Ling
is clearly in labor. She's quite close to having the baby by this stage.
The infant panda is a tiny naked cub, a thousandth the size of its mother. Now the question for
the zoo officials was whether or not the cub had been born alive. A few tense moments pass,
and yes, the new panda's breathing.
In a very similar posture to humans, the mother takes her child to the breast and cuddles
it closely. But the joy of the birth was not to last. The cub, which was a male, had contracted
a chest infection from the womb and died three hours later. Now pay attention, Smythe, write
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Ling Ling spent some days afterwards cradling apples or other objects in the place of her
cub. The following year there was also a successful meeting, but this time the cub was still born,
an infection again. But there have been successes elsewhere. Sad though the Washington experience
is, other zoos have managed to breed giant pandas. And the rates everywhere should improve
with further experience.
The panda is a symbol of threatened extinction. It's a cuddly animal which has become the
representative for all the thousands upon thousands of creatures and plants which will
cease to exist in a few years unless we care more for our surroundings. The awful truth
about the world's environment is that we're now in a period when species are becoming
extinct at a rate unequaled since the dinosaurs died out. But today this loss of species is
mostly a man-made tragedy as opposed to a natural one.