THE ZOO
The Baby Giant Panda A RECENT expedition to the mountains of South-West China has enriched the London Zoo with three giant pandas and a golden snub-nosed monkey, animals so rare that hitherto even science has known them only by hearsay. The youngest of the three pandas is on exhibition in the tea pavilion of the Zoo between twelve and three daily, together with the monkey. The latter, however, so delicately beautiful that it might have stepped out of a Sung silk-painting, receives little attention; it droops in its cage, lonely, watching its new world through bewildered, apprehensive eyes. It is the panda that has- caught the public imagination. Untroubled by loneliness or question- ings, it has taken well its comfortable captivity, and has all the qualities required of a popular pet. Lolling on its improvised bed of boards, a soft somnolent lump of fur, the young giant strikes you not with its rarity but with its familiarity. It is almost impossible to believe that you and Europe see it now for the first time. That white ponderous head with its quaint black ears and eyes and gentle melancholic expression, that cosy cuddly body, those flopping fumbling limbs—of course you have seen it before, in upper-class nur- series, beside the childless duchess on the divan, so much more fluffily absurd and adorable than the teddybear in every proletarian pram.
Seeing it then, huge and expensive among the satins, you were excited only to vague speculations about totemism and the population problem. But now this panda raises greater issues. The living spit-and-image of a toy-maker's dream, can it be true that giant pandas inhabit the wildest mountains of Tartary? Are these the fabulous monsters ranging the untamed in- accessible regions of the world? For this tragelaph not merely looks like a much-petted toy, it behaves like one. It lies drowsily for hours on end, waggling a limp paw and blinking one mild eye, or it waddles affectionately after its keeper, or allows itself to be picked up and held out to the fond hands of children and old ladies. Watching it, you know you must revise all your ideas about nature. No longer red in tooth and claw, nature is just a blowsy, sentimental old nursemaid who has taken us in with her talk of bogymen.
There is the chance, of course, that it is the giant panda that is taking us in. In the Quarantine Section of the Zoo the behaviour of the two adult pandas is being closely watched, for almost nothing is known of the habits of the creatures in their natural state. A skin was the only evidence on which Pere David established their existence sixty years ago; and, until the capture of these live specimens, only a skull and a couple of carcases were added to the sum of knowledge. Physiologically, they are related both to the bear and to the raccoon, thus presenting zoologists with a pretty phylogenetic problem to begin with; but beyond this all is speculation.. Although classified among the carnivores, their teeth have been modified for purposes of vegetarian feeding. They are unknown outside the bamboo forests of the Szechuan province, where their black and white markings allow them to lead a comfortably inconspicuous existence among snow and shadows. They are believed to feed entirely on small bamboo shoots, and have developed a rudimentary second thumb to hold the food. They are believed further to be nocturnal animals. ' But it is not yet known whether they hibernate; and should it be proved that they do not, then conclusions about their vegetarianism and general innocuousness might well prove to be wrong. Bamboo shoots are unavailable in winter, and if the giant pandas do not sleep, what do they eat? Are they capable of fierce rapacities when food is scarce? Are their slow unwieldy limbs seasonally bestirred to sudden death-dealing attacks? Where so little is known, all dangers are possible.
Meanwhile the charming young panda dozes daily in its straw-covered arena in the tea pavilion, rousing itself from time to time to make clumsy playful passes at its keeper, the most guileless ,entertainment in London. A continuous press of visitors, young and old, maintain the nursery atmosphere; and the occasional note-taking mass-observer or gloom- ridden anti-vivisectionist need disturb no one. Europe being what it is, it is a pity that the supply of baby giant pandas is so meagre. Nevertheless there is consolation in the thought that even one will probably be enough to stimulate the jaded imagination of the toy-makers who recently gave us the Cham-
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