Everyone say nǐ hǎo (hello) to Chu Xin and Pang Niu! These are the cubs at the Shenshuping Kindergarten who are now a part of our reintroduction study. So far, we have only been working with the bears at Tiantiashan and Hetoping, collecting data on release candidates. The Shenshuping Kindergarten cubs will give us a data on completely captive bears. To explain this a little better, we are conducting trials on bears from Shenshuping (Captive & open to public), Hetaoping (Bigger pens & private), and Tiantaishan (Semi wild & private). This will allow us to analyze the differences between each environment.

Zack and I started our first trial at Shenshuping this past Monday. We attached a regular piece of bark with no scent/pee on it, which represents our control trial. This will give us a baseline to eliminate variables as to why they might be interacting with one scent and not the other. We then proceeded to do a live one hour scoring session of their behaviors. Even though they did not interact or investigate the bark, this still gives us useable data. It could either mean they did not notice the new object or they did not care about it. I did witness many other behaviors such as feeding on bamboo, playing with sticks, lying around, climbing tress, and playing together. It’s always a great day when you get to watch little fur balls playing! They even tried out the teeter totter for us. However, some of the guests seemed more interested in taking pictures of Zack and I rather than the pandas! I am excited to keep going with the trials and see what crazy things those little guys do.

Talk Soon- Nicki