Hello friends of PDXWildlife, Doireann Ferris here. For my previous blog post I talked about one of our personality trials we conduct here at PDXWildlife -the ice block enrichment trial. Another very interesting enrichment we provide is the introduction of a ball. The ball is a favorite among the resident pandas here in Bifengxia. The ball we use is large and red but most importantly it is very durable. Ball trials are a great success because pandas are naturally playful and their different personalities can be observed easily. The biggest fan of the ball by far is our 4-year old female Su Shan.
Su Shan was born at the base on August 20th, 2011 and was predominately hand raised. This little firecracker is the most playful panda at the base and although she loves getting an ice block, for her nothing beats the excitement of getting to play with the big red ball! When the ball is put into the enclosure, most pandas tend to approach the foreign object with care and caution. Not Su Shan! She runs to the ball and starts to play with it right away.
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- Ball Personality Test
Su Shan mostly enjoys lying on her back, holding the ball to her chest as she bites it or claws at it. She also likes to roll around with it as well as hitting it with her paw and catching it or chasing after it. Another panda who loves to play with the ball is Su Shan’s father Bai Yang who also resides at Bifengxia base. Perhaps cute and crazy playfulness is a heritable trait for these Giant Pandas?
Bei Bei at the Smithsonian National Zoo likes to play with a ball, too. Does anyone know if our lovely pandas are able to see in color or do they just see in black and white? Maybe the color of the ball given for enrichment influences their enjoyment of it, too
Zoo Atlanta actually performed a study to see if giant pandas can distinguish color. — http://www.zooatlanta.org/home/research_projects/giant_panda_research/giant_panda_discrimination
Thank you for answering my question!
Su Shan loves red balls. When she was living at Dujiangyan, her adopted mom sent her red ball. She must be remembering her time with it. I actually videoed when I was watching on ipanda — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=phGTdFAeFa4
Here’s one video of Su Shan (several others, too) when she was at the Panda Kindergarten — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LM5Xdw9lxUo