Giant Pandas

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How these creatures have survived I will never know.
Not only do they eat a food that is so deficient in nutrients that they need to eat bamboo for 12 hours a day just to survive, but they also refuse to eat half the varieties of bamboo that grow in the wild (60).
On top of that they choose to eat the part of the bamboo that is worst for them (the stalk: they eat the leaves and shoots in winter when the stalks are not available. They only have to eat these for 8 hours a day to survive).
Even after all that has been taken into account they give birth when the young is so underdeveloped that the chance of survival is very low. Each mother gives birth to 1 or 2 but only 1 ever survive. She is only receptive from the age of 6 for about 10 years. Pandas live to 18 years ish.
Plus the panda penis is about the smallest in the world compared to the size of the female reproductive system, meaning the majority of matings are doomed to fail

Now that is a big ask!

But they are pretty cute.

The breeding facility at Chengdu is responsible for the vast majority of Pandas around the world. They have been bred and been donated to other countries. Unfortunately it is very rare for a panda to be introduced to the wild because survival of the young is almost impossible it the wild. The breeding facility has been built specifically to house panda's that have been born in captivity. That have 6 there at the moment aged between 1 and 5.

The rest of Chengdu is ok. NIce to have a walk around but I'm getting bored of big cities (Chengdu has a population of about 4 million: 2 - 3x the size of Manchester). We fly to Kunming tomorrow in preparation to cross the border to Vietnam on Tuesday.

The other thing that Chendu is famous for is Tea and hotpot. Tea and hotpot? I can get that in the Rovers Return!!! Aparantly this was the the first place that tea was ever drunk: and the hot pot is not like Bettys - a big pot of soup is heated by a gas burner on your table (the hot pot) and you throw in things to cook them. Literally anything: beef, pork, chicken, veg, noodles, poodles, spaniels, rodents, smarmy waiters.
Very nice though!

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