Pandas frolic in man-made snowfall

It was smoggy and overcast in Chengdu, Sichuan province, on Thursday. But visitors to the Chengdu Research Base of Giant Panda Breeding in the northern suburbs of the city had a pleasant surprise to see a panda mother frolicking in the snow with her two cubs.

Ai Li, the eight-year-old mother, rolled in piles of snow and kept licking it. Her twin male cubs Ai Mi and Ai Lun, born on June 16, 2018, were cautious at the sight of snow at first. They approached it slowly, feeling with their claws or licking it. Finally, they relaxed and rolled on it.

“Chengdu is not as cold as Beijing in winter. It is nothing unusual for the city not to have snowflakes for a decade. Both people and pandas are happy to see the snow,” said Chao Kang, a 79-year-old resident.

However, the snow was provided specially for the three pandas living in a nursery in the base. According to base chief Zhang Zhihe, two trucks of snow were transported to the base from the Taiziling Ski Ranch in Maoxian county in the Aba Tibetan and Qiang autonomous prefecture in Sichuan on Wednesday.

The base will keep providing the snow for the trio in order to arouse their interest in the new environment and move around, he said.

Wild pandas stay active for hours each day. But captive pandas are known for being inactive, which contributes to their low birthrate. Researchers have tried many methods to get captive pandas to move around and be more active.

For example, researchers in the China Conservation and Research Center for the Giant Panda in Wenchuan county, Sichuan, place biscuits made of corn and trace elements in places where the pandas cannot easily find them.

Also, breeders freeze fruits before giving them to the pandas, so pandas have to play with the fruits until they thaw before eating, said center deputy chief Zhang Hemin.

Thursday marked the second time this year that the Chengdu base had created a novel environment to help pandas be more active.

On Jan 23, keepers placed lots of colorful food on bamboo and tree branches in the yards of some of the pandas’ enclosures.

The food consisted of pandas’ favorites: apples, carrots, oranges and honey. The pandas had to climb the bamboo and trees if they wanted to eat, said Wu Kongjun, a researcher at the base.