Pandamonium

To say these things are cute does not begin to describe it. They really are walking teddy bears.

In addition to seeing the young and adolescent pandas wrestling and climbing, and some older ones chewing bamboo ponderously, I also had a chance to see the twins born in mid-August (they would fit in your palm), and a video showing panda births.

Often, panda mothers are surprised by their first birth and don't know how to treat newborns, swatting at them in their hairless, sightless helplessness. This fact, combined with the stunning statistic that they typically only have sex once per year (!), the increasing encroachment into their territory, their solitary natures, their strong preferences about what species of bamboo they eat, and the limited nutrition they can derive it anyway (they can only metabolize about 20% of the food they eat, which means they must down about 100 pounds of it per day), all serve to explain their small numbers (1,590 worldwide, according to one person at the panda center, including perhaps a third of that number that are in captivity).

The panda center is putting out one heck of an effort to help their numbers grow, including the equivalent of a panda dating service (if that fails, resorting to artificial insemination), but it's a going to take a long time...