EDINBURGH ZOO’S PANDA, Tian Tian, may or may not be pregnant. According to media reports her hormone levels keep going up and down and she recently became “sensitive” to noise, with the result that officials shut off her enclosure from the public.
It’s hard to tell when pandas are pregnant because sometimes the only way you realise something is up is when the female drops a sprog at the back of the pen.
I’m not a panda fan. I remember when the World Worldlife Fund had one as its symbol. I liked them then (I was a child, after all) but really couldn’t care less now. I know you shouldn’t anthropomorphise animals but pandas bring out the worst in me. Rhinos have a certain kind of dangerous charm. Elephants are stupendous. Tigers are magnificent. But pandas? Aren’t they just a bit boring — and stupid?
WHAT ANNOYS MOST about them is that they’re an evolutionary dead loss. They only eat bamboo, which is not very nutritious and can only be found in certain areas. They’re not keen on the sex thing. Most female pandas only feel up for it one day – a year. Three if you’re lucky. That probably applies to the males, as well. By all accounts, they’re a write off, too, their sperm production ceasing in June.
The females are not very good good at getting pregnant when they do indulge in the sex thing. That’s not a great survival mechanism. They don’t socialise, either, which hardly increases the chances of chatting up a prospective partner, even if it is just for a quickie. And the male doesn’t hang around once the evil deed is done. Presumably he reckons the equivalent of the panda welfare state can take care of his offspring while he blunders about in the bamboo. On his own.
People like pandas because of one thing only – their looks. If they didn’t look like cuddly, innocent, babyish soft toys nobody would care. Oh, those cute black eyes and tufty ears! Oh, the way Mr Panda sits on his hairy backside chewing his way through strips of bamboo!
If Komodo dragons were similarly endangered people wouldn’t be so concerned. I don’t think you’d have the likes of the BBC’s Nicholas Witchell reporting from outside the zoo on the progress of Kiera Komodo.
Komodos, unlike pandas, are evil incarnate, of course, which means their chances of survival are better.
Maybe it’s because I’m getting old and suffering sclerosis of the emotions. Maybe the well of my compassion is running dry, but I have to say I don’t give a damn about Tian Tian or even the 14 cuddlesome cubs recently born in China. Without us maligned humans keeping their species going, these useless freeloaders would die out in a couple of years.
Pandas are pants.
