The end of my first month at the Panda base of Bifengxia has officially ended. The month had a busy beginning which occupied all my time as Stephanie McMahon (the previous intern) trained me in the personality and stereotypical studies and prepared to hand off all the work.  During this time I also got familiar with the panda base staff and the Chinese culture.

After a week of intensive training, I was ready to continue Steph’s job and I had to say goodbye to my super trainer!

Unfortunately, after my first week of working alone, the advanced state of pregnancy of the female pandas forced me to stop putting enrichment in their cages (we and the base were worried this may cause undue stress to the females), so I had to focus on their stereotypical behavior.  However, I was able to continue the personality study on the males.

I’ve been confronted with various behavioral reaction to the enrichment items we present to the bears. Some of the bears are quite aggressive: Cui cui ruined my ball in 30 seconds by biting it strongly directly after seeing it. At least she was interested!  After seeing the pan with water and fruits, Lu Lu, went straight for it and preferred biting all around the edge of the pan before he even looked at the fruits! On the other hand he barely noticed the block of ice I put in with him!

Lu Lu sleeping next to the block of ice

I also met A Ling, a real “Kung Fu panda” that climbed her cage until she was at the level of the roof and stayed there to rest up in the tree.

A Ling and her kung fu panda ways.

Even if we lost a little data on some of the personality study, I had the unrivaled luck to meet the first new born babies of the year: Hai Zi had twins, then Xi Xi had a little female (right as Cao Cao was having twins in Wolong), and more recently Xin Nier also had a cub.

Xin Nier’s new baby

It’s exciting to discover all the activities linked with these births.  For example I was amazed at how the keepers get into the mothers’ cages, while they are with their babies, and spend time touching her to build a trust relationship in order to facilitate both the baby exchange and the milking task (the keepers get milk from the mothers to feed the babies in the nursery). Indeed, regularly, the keepers move the babies from the mother to the nursery, or even to another mother (for example Hai Zi is now taking care of Cao Cao’s baby).

Now that Hai Zi’s babies are one month old, I will be able to start studying the maternal behavior which I’m really looking forward to and can’t wait to experience!

-Amélie