Zoo Atlanta is home to two giant pandas, Lun Lun and Yang Yang. Lun Lun is an avid climber who enjoys playing throughout the day, while Yang Yang is playful and easygoing.
They are both nearly seven years old and together eat about 220 pounds of bamboo a day. The zoo relies on bamboo donated from private lands to feed Lun Lun and Yang Yang. The zoo uses their own team to harvest the bamboo, but I think it would be more interesting if they simply took the pandas out to graze at the site.
Of notable interest is that the zoo has a webcam of the pandas, available from 10am to 5pm (EST) Tuesday through Friday. Of course you can guess what they spend most of the day doing.
Only three zoos in the US have pandas: Zoo Atlanta, The San Diego Zoo, and The National Zoo. Both of these latter zoos also have panda cams: San Diego and The National Zoo.
5 Comments
Jason South · 22 June 2004
Don't forget the Pandamania Art Project in DC:
PandaMania DC
Reed A. Cartwright · 22 June 2004
Forget pandamania, We Let the Dawgs Out.
Ophelia Benson · 22 June 2004
"but I think it would be more interesting if they simply took the pandas out to graze at the site."
We used to do that with the elephants, at the zoo where I used to work. There was one last section of the zoo that was left a bit wild and natural, and once in awhile we would take two or three of them out there to play and eat long grass. We would also fantasize about taking them out of the zoo altogether, walking down the street, down the hill, to Green Lake, and letting them go for a nice swim. It would have been so fun...
Bob Maurus · 22 June 2004
Ophelia,
Dreams are wonderful, and sometimes they're all that make it worth keeping on going on. It truly would have been so fun. I can picture it.
Anna Ross · 25 June 2004
Here is an addition to Reed A. Cartwright's list of US zoos that have Giant Pandas:
The Memphis Zoo (TN) http://www.memphiszoo.org
has two Giant Pandas, Ya Ya (pronounced Yah Yah) "a three year-old female giant panda from the Beijing Zoo in China" and Le Le (pronounced Luh Luh) "a five year-old male giant panda from the Shanghai Zoo in China." The Memphis Zoo also has a panda cam.
The Memphis Zoo has an extensive program of research on the captive pandas (focusing on their nutrition and food selection) as well as projects on conserving their natural habitat.
The two pandas are on loan to the Memphis Zoo for ten years. (FedEx transported the two Pandas from Beijing, China to the Memphis Zoo in Memphis, Tennessee on April 7, 2003.)
http://www.memphiszoo.org/cgi-bin/frame_set.php?key=giant
http://www.memphiszoo.org/frame_set.php?key=pandacam