Giulia Ciminelli is our second fall 2017 Gengda weaning intern and she has a special love for giant pandas that I think most of our followers can relate to. Lets hear what brought her to our program and how her first week went.

Greetings PDXWildlife!

My name is Giulia, I am a fond lover of animals and especially passionate about Giant Pandas since I see them as a widely recognized symbol to improve the awareness of people around the world about wildlife and nature preservation. During my master degree I grew fond of Giant Pandas and my final paper was about the breeding of a captive Giant Panda. In order to gather my data and observations I moved to France 5 months in the “Zooparc de Beauval”.

My devotion and love for this field has always been my most precious resource and gave me strength and passion to take even the toughest decisions. Today I can connect the dots backwards and see them aligning towards the wonderful experience that this internship will provide me.

For the past week we have been improving our knowledge of the ethogram and learning the different kind of stereotypes. For the moment we have seen some stereotype behaviors such as tongue flicks, rolling, and some stereotype pacing, but it is only the beginning and we have to improve our skills. I am glad to be a part of this project, I am sure that we can help the researchers, the pandas and we can also have fun all together in Gengda.

For the next two weeks I will live with three other Americans who are really nice and we spend funny days together, sharing our experiences, our dreams and projects for the future. I like to meet young people who love animals and nature, and this experience is a perfect way to know different stories, different culture and different habits.

Talk Soon-