Enter the Panda

Cute and cuddly; an animated teddy bear; one of the most universally beloved animals on earth: The panda.

The panda before me looks the part. He’s hanging from a tree branch, balancing his body playfully above the bamboo branches. Just when you think he’s going to fall, he loops up again to the ooos and awwws of all the on-lookers. And yes, he is so god-damned cute.

I’m at the Giant Panda Breeding Research Center in Chengdu, China. The center houses more than 44 pandas, which is a lot because less than 100 exist in the wild. Chengdu is crazy about Pandas. As the English language magazine, Go West said in an article obviously written by a non-native speaker, “The black and white pandas completely absorbed in the life of Chengdu people. In their minds the panda are not animals but angels; not neighbors but family members; not immigrants but citizens, respected honorable citizens.”

The research center is operated by the government. One of the government’s jobs is to cover up unsightly facts. Here is a fact that panda lovers may not like to mention: 45% of all panda births result in twins. Of those twins, only one will survive. It is not because of natural selection, but rather, the mother panda will abandon her less favored child to the ravages of the wild. She plays favorites in the deadliest of ways: MURDER. Respected honorable citizen indeed, China.

On the tour we are led to a small cinema showing a documentary. Here, I discover more startling facts. According to the video, China puts the success of breeding the panda in captivity on the same scale as building The Great Wall. I think they are exaggerating until I hear how hard that actually is.

The Panda has been around some 8 million years, but you wouldn’t know it by the way they breed. Pandas need a breeding center because they are really bad at having sex and, for that matter, surviving in general. First, they subside on bamboo, an extremely fibrous plant. They must eat about 40 kg of bamboo a day, but can only absorb two percent of the nutrients. The rest comes out in endless piles of crap. In summary, they spend most of their days stuffing themselves and crapping. Not a recipe for romance.

Furthermore, they tend to be solitary creatures so there’s the problem of finding each other. And when they do cohabitate in small groups, they are also lazy, resulting in inbreeding so rampant that it would rival an average royal family.

Then, the video shows us what happens when they try to mate. The shot opens with two large pandas in a cage. The female tries to escape, dashing herself against the bars as the large male tries to pull her down. Then, the female turns on him and snaps her jaws, batting his head with her claw. Now, either she’s playing hard to get or we are watching a panda rape attempt. I have seen enough.

The next scene starts with a blank screen and a voiceover, “When natural mating doesn’t work…” I hear the music of Enya and immediately become frightened. My worst fears are realized when it fades in to a zonked-out female panda lying flat on a table as doctors shove syringes full of panda spunk into her privates. The makers of the video are sick enough to continue the Enya music as we follow the panda through the various stages of pregnancy.

The culmination of all that is the birth of a baby panda, which is the most shocking event of all. The video opens on a shot of the mother standing in a cage. Suddenly, a little weasel-looking creature falls from her loins. The mother jumps back and doesn’t know what to make of it. She investigates with her paw and then starts violently batting her baby around on the floor as the researchers rush to the rescue.

And then, yes, you have the typical montage of the weasel somehow turning into the cute cuddly panda and we forget all the previous horror. At the end, the voice-over comments on the success of the center, saying, “77 pandas have been born in the center since its inception. 40 have survived.” I can’t help thinking: How many of those baby pandas were murdered?
But as I stand in front of one of the panda display areas, the pandas are adorably chewing on something and no one gives a crap. The spectators are too busy flashing their cameras in ignorant photo ops.

I want to free them of this ignorance and expose the panda for the murderer that it really is. I approach an older male guide and ask him like a straight shooter: “I know the center is trying to keep a secret.”

“What’s that?”

“That when the panda mother has twins in the wild, it will keep one and leave the other one to die. Isn’t that true?”

“Umm…I never heard of that. I don’t think that’s true because if you want to see Panda in wild, it is very hard. You must stay there a long time and Panda is very hard to find.”

“Yeah, but when the Panda has two babies, in the wild, it basically kills one of them. Right?”

“I don’t think so because the Panda has baby in the autumn so there is much time to have the baby.”

“You’re dodging my question.”

“I must guide my tour now.”

“Why are you afraid of the truth!”
[Ignores me. People stare.]

Obviously, they aren’t going to let out the most damaging secret about pandas ever. I got a good dose of Communist double speak. That, or the guy just didn’t speak English very well.
I decide to ask another guide, a young Chinese woman. I creep up close to her and whisper: ”I know.”

“Yes?”

“Yes.”

“Know what?”

“That the pandas are murderers.”

“I don’t think so.”

“Oh, so you don’t think that when pandas have twins in the wild, that the mother kills one of them?”

“Yes, this is true. But the life is very hard so the mother can only care for one of them.”
Typical. She was trying to blame misfortune on external circumstances, just like the communist she is. Oh, no, certainly it couldn’t be that pandas are evil. It’s their “environment” and “evolution.” Excuses.

She continues. “But our government has given great effort to save our endangered pandas and they are working all the time to ensure their survival.”

“Well, no wonder they’re endangered. Your government could start by arresting the mothers. They’re murderers.”

“We must make compromises.”

After this admission of guilt, I made it my mission to speak truth to the masses. But in return, I got responses like “Not really,” “So what?” and “She’s four. Don’t ruin this for her.” In the end, people just didn’t want to know. They’d rather have warm, soft and fake, rather than cold, hard and truth.