Gong Zhu with the basketball for the personality test.
Things have been getting interesting here at Bi Feng Xia. So far, four females have given birth and the cub count is up to seven (three sets of twins)! I have been trying to collect as much personality data on the females before they get close to giving birth, so I have been spending a lot of time up at the breeding center (also so I can sneak peeks at the newborns with their mothers!). Nearly a month ago, I put a basketball into Gong Zhu’s enclosure and recorded her behavior for the following hour. She was by far the most interested in the ball out of all of the pandas that I have studied. She spent most of the first half of the hour pawing/ following the ball (I like to call it panda soccer), grabbing the ball and biting it. She popped the ball about halfway through the trial! She bit into it and actually popped the basketball; pressurized air came flowing out, making a loud noise and hurling the ball the opposite direction. This surprised Gong Zhu and she shot up and trotted away from the ball. It did not take her very long to go back to the deflated basketball and investigate. She then spent the majority of the remaining time anointing her scent onto the ball. If you have never seen a panda do this, it is when they take an object and rub it over their bodies, usually making movements similar to that of a house cat cleaning its face.
http://youtu.be/-AWFpb4m7VA
The ball didn’t survive very well!
After her reaction to the basketball, I was excited to see what Gong Zhu’s response to an ice block with apples and carrots would be, especially since all of the other pandas have been spending much more time with the ice block in comparison to the basketball. The other day I was finally able to do this. It was a very hot day so I thought Gong Zhu would go crazy over the ice block. I had a keeper put the block in her enclosure and I recorded her behavior for the next hour. It was actually very interesting, she only spent a few minutes with the ice block, and did not attempt to eat it. I thought she would at least lay on it to cool off (I would have loved to myself!), but she ignored the ice block for the majority of the hour, choosing to sleep several meters away.
She wasn’t as excited about the ice block.
A lot of the female pandas at the breeding center have been acting differently the past couple of weeks; they eat a lot less and spend most of their time indoors sleeping. These can be signs of pregnancy and may have affected Gong Zhu’s behavior during this trial. It is definitely something to think about during analysis of data.
-Arina