Why I hate giant pandas

Posted by karen at 02:23 PM in culture , rants , science . | 4 Comments

Last night I watched an episode of Nature called "The Panda Baby" I learned that the giant panda is so endearing that people are willing to spend millions of dollars to maintain the species in captivity. Even though giant pandas are a bunch of jerk-off slackers.

Okay, here are some giant panda facts.

Apparently, (despite what your science teacher may have told you) giant pandas are mutated bears. Thus they have the digestive tracts ideally suited for eating meat. But do they eat meat? No. Those fat bastards only eat bamboo. So they are only able to digest about 20% of the dry matter of their entire diet. Okay, so they did the best they could to adapt to a place where bamboo was in plenty. And why bother to hunt when you can just sit on your ass all day and eat bamboo?

So generally we feel this sort of guilt towards endandered species, because our development into wildlife areas destroys their habitat. Now, I'm not entirely informed on this, but according to Nature, that's not what happened to giant pandas. What happened was that the bamboo was decimated by disease. And since giant pandas are so delightfully adaptable, they started to starve. But there's no Prime Directive in wildlife conservation. There's something more like the Adoration Directive, where we are most interested in perserve the cutest species. And giant pandas are cute. They roll down hills. They do handstands to pee the highest on a tree.

But they do not thrive in captivity. They don't die, but neither do they breed. Oh, but we need captive bred giant pandas! They are essential to the zoo habitat! So if they won't hump (for whatever mysterious reason that wasn't resolved even after spending more loads of money) we'll use artificial insemination. Because nature is so great!

So I guess we will do our damnedest to teach evolution in our schools. But we're sure as hell not going to let it happen if we can help it.