UNIVERSIDADE DE BRASÍLIA

INSTITUTO DE LETRAS – IL
DEPARTAMENTO DE LÍNGUAS ESTRANGEIRAS E TRADUÇÃO – LET
142573 – Inglês Instrumental 2 Prof. Julwaity Cardoso Neto

The truth about giant pandas

Wild pandas are nothing like their captive counterparts.
They have a dangerously powerful bite and an intense sex drive.

1 Reputation: Giant pandas are cute and harmless, with an amusing habit of sneezing. But their
insistence on eating bamboo is dumb and they are rubbish at sex, so they deserve to go extinct.
Except, of course, those proficient in kung fu.
Reality: They are cute, for sure. But don't go in for a cuddle; pandas can deliver one heck of a
5 bite. Eating bamboo is a blinding evolutionary strategy. They have an intense and productive sex
drive. They do not deserve to go extinct.

There is a lot of confusion about giant pandas, possibly more than any other species alive. This is
because of the absolutely massive symbolic, political and economic baggage that is heaped on
10 captive pandas. This burden far outweighs what we really know about this species in the wild.
This division between captive and wild pandas is important. Because the truth about pandas
depends on which kind of panda you're talking about.
If it's the captive panda you are interested in, then the fluffy, sneezing, clownish, reproductively-
inept stereotype stands.
15 But if it's the truth about wild pandas you're after, then you need to shut down the panda-cam,
take a deep breath and purge your mind of everything you think you know about giant pandas.
Most of it is wrong.
What is undeniably true is that pandas are striking animals. In 1966, zoologist Desmond Morris
put forward 20 factors to explain the human obsession with pandas. About half of them were to
20 do with appearance: flat face, large eyes, soft appearance, rounded outline, contrasting colours
and so on.
But appearances can be deceptive and it would be a mistake to get too close to a wild panda.
Even in captivity, where pandas are used to being cooed over by humans, they can be dangerous.
In 2006, a drunken 28-year-old man by the name of Zhang clambered into the panda enclosure at
25 Beijing Zoo and tried to pet the internee. He'd been showing off to his companion, but all he had
to show for his exploits was a right calf savaged beyond recognition.
Such injuries are possible because of the giant panda's incredibly chunky skull and Mohican-like
sagittal crest. This is the anchor point for a massive chewing muscle that can deliver one of the
 highest bite forces of any carnivore. The panda needs this impressive bite if it is to crack its way
30 into the tough sheath of a bamboo stem.
The giant panda has performed a remarkable evolutionary switcheroo. It is a carnivore that has
found a way to eat bamboo, a food source that is pretty dependable from one season to the next.
Even better, unlike the prey of most carnivores, bamboo is not in the habit of running away.
But it is on the subject of sex where the reputation of captive pandas is at greatest odds with the
35 reality in the wild. Giant pandas have a peculiar reproductive cycle, with adult females becoming
fertile just once a year for less than two days. With such an unusual arrangement, it is inevitable
that pandas struggle to breed in captivity.
We humans have only been studying giant pandas in the wild since 1980 and we still have so
much to learn. But from what we can tell, pandas do sex very, very differently in the wild.
40 It was the legendary zoologist George Schaller who made some of the first observations of real,
wild panda sex. In 1981, he'd been tracking a female called Zhen-Zhen, as were two male pandas
– one large, one small. "The small male comes near, moaning, and is promptly attacked again,
though I only hear growls, roars, and whines like a pack of dogs fighting and see the bamboo
shake violently," he wrote in “The Giant Pandas of Wolong”.
45 It turns out that threesome or more-somes are pretty standard for giant pandas in the wild, an
arrangement that would be hard to replicate in any zoo. In just over three hours, Schaller recorded
the large male mating with Zhen-Zhen at least 48 times, roughly once every three minutes.
This intensity and frequency of sexual congress may account for the observation that pandas are
so much more productive in the wild than they are in captivity. A long-term study of radio-
50 collared pandas in the Qingling Mountains in Shaanxi Province revealed that females reliably
give birth every other year and 60% of cubs survive to see in their first birthday. “On the basis of
its reproductive potential, the giant panda therefore remains an evolutionarily successful species,”
wrote zoologist Pan Wenshi and his colleagues in 2004.
If you are still clinging to the panda-bad-sex stereotype, there is one more truth about pandas that
55 you need to digest. This species, in one shape or form, has been around for some 20 million
years. That, boys and girls, is the definition of good at sex.

Source: http://www.bbc.com/earth/story