What’s black and white and loved all over? Yang Yang! And what a unique panda Yang Yang is, given his life history and stereotypic behaviours. First off, Yang Yang was born in the wilds of Baishuiji, China in October of 2001. In 2002 he was brought to the Bifengxia Panda Base. From the time he was a cub, he was exposed to human beings. The shaping of Yang Yang, as a now 16 year old bear, has been influenced by the humans around him; which could potentially be why he enjoys stationary alerting humans a lot. I mean, personally, I find giant pandas more fascinating than humans. But maybe Yang Yang is just as curious about us humans as we are of him, and his black and white friends. Yang Yang’s character can often appear similar to that of any other panda: loving to eat bamboo and sleeping away 80% of his life. But what happens for that remaining 20% of the day..? As interns, we observe the pandas to determine if stereotypical behaviors appear during the most active points of their day.

A stereotype is defined as ‘a repetitive behavior that has no purpose or function’. It’s easy to say that, after viewing Yang Yang for a few days, he seems to fit the category of a ‘stereotypical bear’. Yang Yang exhibits stereotypic pacing, along with quasi-stereotypic pacing, stereotypical tongue flicks and stereotypical vocalizations. When Yang Yang creates a quasi-stereotypic pace, it’s the result of not completing the exact same route of locomotion, three times; but instead distorting the route by either changing direction from the original path or performing another behavior within the pattern. In Yang Yang’s case, his original pacing path was broken when he decided to stationary alert at a tree, with interest in climbing it. One of the most common stereotypic pacings that I have observed, is Yang Yang walking from his paddock outside, to his shift door, and then to a grassy area in front of the keepers’ rail. Here, he would stationary alert humans while bleating. When he was later ready to move, he incorporated a tongue flick as he turned to walk back to his shift door. The most repetitive behaviour, and quite possibly Yang Yang’s favourite, is his bleating vocalization.

An abundance of stereotypic behaviors were displayed by Yang Yang on a day full of sunshine and high humidity. However, he was less stereotypic (mainly only tongue flicked) on another day, when the weather was cooler. Between Yang Yang’s constant bleating, and human-oriented stationary alerting, it’s hard to suppress the urge to give the giant panda bear a hug! Gaining information about the stereotypic behaviours performed by pandas in captivity, gives us humans a better understanding of how these behaviors might positively or negatively impact the future of the giant panda population.

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PDXWildlife is happy to have brought on Katie Zajac to conduct Stereotypic and Maternal Care observations. We are very grateful for her “oversized” camera as she is able capture some fantastic images, such as the ones above. Be sure to leave her a comment below if you would like to know more about Yang Yang.