With a solid week of heavy rain, the temperature dropped from the low 90’s and has hovered around the ideal mid 70’s here at Bifengxia. The temperature change also gave way to each intern hitting the benchmark 90% inter-observer reliability for their respective studies. This means that everyone can now collect behavioral observations on their own, adding to a significant pool of Stereotypic and Maternal data on giant pandas.
Hallie headed over to the White Bear Ground pen #7 to observe Lu Lu #936 (禄禄), a three year old female who has an adorable clumsiness when eating bamboo. Katie wasn’t far away at pen #2, observing Le Sheng #512 (乐生), a 17 year old female with a propensity for tongue flicking. Lastly, Katelin has fantastically spearheaded our maternal care observations and recently wrapped up her second viewing of a female that is currently housed at Leopard Mountain. Click HERE for a link to the Bifengxia map.
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- The CCRCGP Bifengxia Research Building. This is where our office is located.
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- Lu Lu, acting like an uncoordinated youngster.
It’s great for me to see all of the girls reach this milestone and move forward in collecting data on their own. Cheesy to say, but I’m a proud panda papa as it takes a lot of dedication, often times in various bouts of nasty, inclement weather to collect these observations. However, the time to kick up our feet doesn’t seem to be headed our way as there are plenty of potential cubs about to be born. We will need to train Katie and Hallie in maternal care so that Katelin doesn’t get overwhelmed with cuddly cub observations. I guess there could be worse jobs to have.
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PDXWildlife has been researching giant pandas with the CCRCGP since 2010. We have offices at Bifengxia and Gengda, and have a team of interns in China on a year-round basis. If you would like to join us or would like some information on how to visit, don’t hesitate to send our Deputy Director, Nathan, an email. You can reach him at- nate@pdxwildlife.com