Panda Pals

Back around 1972, U.S. President Richard Nixon made his famous trip to Red China. Here in the USA, it was major news. The Chinese gave Nixon a couple of pandas, and the pandas were in the news for months and became major celebrities. Like most kids at the time, I thought there was something special about pandas. However, the panda mystique has been sullied by the realities of commercialism.

Getting the pandas to procreate has become a major project for any zoos that have gotten their own pandas. The Chinese Government typically sells the pandas for as much as ten million dollars each. Often the pandas are only rented out to various zoos for several years. Any baby pandas that are born during the rental period are the property of the zoos, so there is a lot of pressure to get the pandas to mate successfully.

A baby panda can be worth millions of dollars to a zoo. It is not just the tourist revenue from visitors, but pandas can be rented to other zoos. The only way to end the cycle of dependence on foreign pandas is for the rental pandas to give birth to American pandas.

This is Ling-Ling and her baby Wing-Wong. A few minutes after this photo was taken she ate the cub.

In order to train the pandas to stop eating their cubs, the Chinese have been dressing babies as pandas and sending them in to the panda cages so that the trainers can teach the pandas to be better parents.

The future of the pandas depends on whether or not human children can teach parenting skills to the pandas.

In China, wealthy women are encouraged to adopt a panda as a symbolic mate.

Sometimes the pandas get excited during these ceremonial visits with their symbolic mates.

Some famous celebrities have bought their own pandas and trained them to perform simple tasks like driving a golf cart.

At some zoos, the pandas have gotten out of their habitats and mated with other animals.

Condensed Panda milk is a very expensive aphrodesiac. It takes zoo workers several hours to milk a can out of a panda.



Dedicated animal lovers have tried to help zoos make money by eating Panda Puffs and Gorrilla Munch. These cereals are made from animal pellets and like cow chips they have a high concentration of fiber which is good for the human digestive system.


These are panda chips.


Several companies have come up with ideas for serving healthy panda meat in school cafeterias.

If you have ever gone to a Chinese restaurant and wondered what is inside the breaded mystery treats, it is not always dogs and cats.

Getting pandas to reproduce seems to be impossible, so one company has come up with the idea of cloning pandas and making panda patties from the ones that come out with defective DNA. It is a win-win situation for everyone?

In China, pandas fight bears on TV game shows like Kimushipoo.

Panda wrestlers tag-team with real pandas and fight bears on Serbian TV.