Friday, March 30, 2007

panda in washington

planet of the pandas

Panda Poo Paper

From the TimesOnline

They are notoriously picky about their food and suffer from an exceptionally low sex drive. But when it comes to poo, pandas have few peers.

Entrepreneurial Chinese are looking for ways to make a profit from the 44lb (20kg) of excrement produced each day by a single adult male, and help the endangered animals to pay their way.

Officials at Chengdu Giant Panda Breeding Base are working on a scheme to convert the fibre-rich droppings into high-quality paper.

Pandas, which live mainly on a diet of bamboo, lack an efficient digestive tract and absorb less than 20 per cent of what they eat. Staff at the Chengdu base in Sichuan province, southwest China, are talking to local paper mills to find ways of processing a range of products from the panda waste, from greeting cards, bookmarks, notebooks and even fridge magnets.

Jing Jing, Ke Bi, Ya Ya and the 40 or so other pandas living at the Chengdu breeding base produce about 200 tonnes of excrement a year. Thus the pandas may begin to pay for their keep at the research centre, which spends millions of pounds on raising and breeding the rare animals.

Liao Jun, a researcher, said: “If the stools can be used to make souvenirs, we will not only make a profit but also help the environment.” He told The Times that it would be wasteful not to find a way to recycle panda droppings. “We aren’t interested in doing this for the profits but to recycle the waste. We can use the paper ourselves and we can sell whatever is left over.”

The idea was inspired by a visit to the Chiang Mai zoo in northern Thailand, where keepers have found that their two resident pandas have become a gift that gives. In a day-long process of cleaning the faeces, bleaching with chlorine and drying in the sun, the zoo has already earned a profit of £2,000 from panda paper.

Mr Liao said he expected to see items ranging from wrapping paper and paper handkerchiefs to tourist souvenirs such as fans and picture frames made from excrement. Visitors may even be able to gain a hands-on experience with the raw material if the research centre succeeds with plans to move production into a museum.

Miss Zhao, a base official, said: “Panda dung consists mainly of bamboo and fibre. So we find that visitors don’t find it disgusting at all.”

Wednesday, March 28, 2007

panda eating panda bread

Panda drinking water

Panda porn



Poor pandas have a hard time breeding. Scientists hope to inspire them.

From FOXnews

CHIANG MAI, Thailand —

Chuang Chuang the panda has been spending his days in front of a big screen television watching panda porn.

Authorities at the Chiang Mai Zoo in northern Thailand hope the images will encourage him to mate with his partner, Lin Hui, and serve as an instructional lesson in how to do it right.

So far, it's been a tough sell, the zoo's chief veterinarian, Kanika Limtrakul, said Tuesday.

"Chuang Chuang seems indifferent to the videos; he has no reaction to what he's seeing on TV," Kanika said. "But we're continuing to show him videos and hoping they will leave an impression."

• Click here to visit FOXNews.com's Natural Science Center.

Pandas are threatened by loss of habitat, poaching and a low reproduction rate. Females in the wild normally have a cub once every two to three years.

There are as few as 1,600 giant pandas in the mountain forests of central China, according to the zoo. An additional 120 are in Chinese breeding facilities and zoos, and about 20 live in zoos outside China.

Zoo officials say Chuang Chuang will be reunited with his partner in about another week. The two pandas have been kept separate since late last year as part of efforts to spark some romance between them.

Chuang Chuang recently was put on a strict diet because zoo officials said he was too heavy to mate. The diet trimmed him down from 331 pounds to 313 pounds.

Thailand rented 6-year-old Chuang Chuang and 5-year-old Lin Hui from China for $250,000 in October 2003 for 10 years. They are expected to generate millions of dollars in revenue from Thai and foreign tourists.

Thank you Boingboing



Monday, March 12, 2007

ghost face killahs

Pandas are the SBDs of the animal kingdom. No other creature can look so cute but rip you to shreds in the blink of an eye.

Maybe Lucy Liu in Kill Bill but that's just a weird tangent.

Pandas are the reason why China's still communist. All that panda love needs to be reined in under strict totalitarianism.