Wednesday, September 19, 2012

Giant Pandas in Japan

As you may already know, the panda is my favorite animal. The big news this week is that Mei Xiang at the National Zoo in Washington DC has given birth! This is the second birth to this panda, the first one in 2005. There was another baby panda born at the San Diego Zoo on 29 July.

For years in the US I followed the pandas by panda cam on the websites of the four US zoos in Atlanta, San Diego, Memphis, and Washington DC. The Giant Panda is endangered as there are only about 1600 pandas in the wild in China, and about 35 in zoos outside China.

There are a couple of zoos but no giant pandas in Hokkaido, but there are several in zoos elsewhere in Japan with pandas. According to Pandas International’s web site, these are the giant pandas and locations in Japan.

Adventure World Shirahama
Nanki-Shirahama, Wakayama, Japan

Official website: www.aws-s.com

Ei Mei (male) was born on September 14, 1992 at the Beijing Zoo.
His mother is Yun Yun  and his father is Liang Liang .
He moved to the Chengdu Research Base of Giant Panda Breeding in May 1994. He came to Adventure World on September 6, 1994.

Rau Hin (female) was born on September 6, 2000 at Adventure World.
Her mother is Mei Mei  and her father is Ha Lan.
She is the first cub to be born at Adventure World. She was the first Japanese born panda to reproduce, when she became the mother of a set of twins on September 13, 2008.

Ai Hin (female) & Mei Hin (male) were born on December 23, 2006 at Adventure World.
Their mother is Mei Mei (and their father is Ei Mei.
They are the eighth and ninth cub to be born at Adventure World.

Mei Hin (female) & Ei Hin (male) were born on September 13, 2008 at Adventure World.
Their mother is Rau Hin  and their father is Ei Mei.
They are the tenth and eleventh cub to be born at Adventure World.

Kobe Oji Zoo
Kobe, Japan

Official website:
www.ojizoo.jp

Tan Tan (female) was born on September 16, 1996 at the China Conservation and Research Center for Giant Panda in Wolong.
Her mother is Dong Dong  and her father is Zhen Zhen.

Ko Ko II (male) was born on September 14, 1995 at the China Conservation and Research Center for Giant Panda in Wolong.
His mother is Jia Jia  and his father is Pan Pan.

Cubs born to the pair: 2007 and 2008 neither survived

Tokyo’s Ueno Zoo
Toyko, Japan
Official Web site:
http://www.tokyo-zoo.net/

Bi Li (male) August 16, 2005 at the China Conservation and Research Center for Giant Panda in Wolong. His mother is Ghong Zhu.

Xian Nu (female) July 3, 2005 at the China Conservation and Research Center for Giant Panda in Wolong. Her mother is Ying Ying.

Pandas are very popular in Japan, especially big headed cartoon type pandas.  Ted is very sweet and sometimes brings me a little box of panda cookies from the university c-store and other little pandas.

The Queen
I spent quite a bit of time stitching yesterday, but it doesn’t look like I completed much. I finished the gold braid down the center of the dress, finished the little gold and charcoal part of the dress below her right hand, finished the gray shading (tiny tent stitch) of the sleeves, worked on the hair. Tomorrow’s another day.

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