In the second half of the 19th century, a sensational event occurred in the world of zoologists. The skin of a large animal completely unknown to science was delivered to the famous Paris Museum of Natural History. At first it seemed that it was cut out by a remarkable craftsman from scraps of black and white fur.
The artifact was carefully analyzed. It soon became clear that the skin was whole, without seams or glue. That is, it belonged to an unknown animal, and the scientific world decided that this animal had long since died out.
But it was not that simple. After all, the skin was quite new! It came to Paris thanks to the French missionary A. David, who was also observing nature. In one of the remote villages of the Sichuan province in 1869, the missionary discovered an amazing skin. Local residents reported that it belonged to a bei-shung, that is, a polar bear living high in the mountains, among dense bamboo thickets.
David sent the skin he found to Europe, and he himself decided to try to find the animal in its natural environment. That same year, a curious Frenchman was lucky enough to see a bey-shung killed the day before and buy the entire carcass. It was also sent to France.
Thus, the last doubts about the reality of the unknown animal were dispelled. At first, it was called a bamboo bear. However, zoologists carefully studied the materials received from China and came to the conclusion that the discovered animal was not a bear, but a raccoon. Therefore, in 1870, the bamboo bear was attributed to the raccoon family and was called the big panda. And the little one was already in the raccoon family, and it lived in East Asia.
As often happens, the discovery interested not only researchers, but also various shady people who love the ringing of coins. Those who want to get rich on the new animal rush to Western China. But only in 1916, with the help of local hunters, they managed to catch a young panda. However, it soon died in captivity. That same year, in the province of Sichuan, they managed to buy six skins of the rare animal.
And yet, for many years, attempts to catch a new animal ended in failure. Only in 1936, American R. Harkness acquired a young panda and brought it to San Francisco. This animal was given the nickname Su-Lin, which meant “a small piece of a huge treasure.”
Then, in 1938, two more adult animals were delivered to the United States. Four adults and one young panda were soon transported to London. Unfortunately, six more bamboo bears did not make it to the capital of England, but died on the way.
In 1957, a large panda named Pin-Pin appeared in the Moscow Zoo. She lived there for 4 years, the last two of which she spent next to another large panda named An-An.
In 1977, there were a total of 30 giant pandas in all the world's zoos. For a long time, it was unclear whether they were capable of reproducing in captivity, until in 1963, a female named Li-Li gave birth to a baby weighing 142 grams in the Beijing Zoo. In 1964, the same female gave birth to another cub. Thus, it was possible to establish that the gestation period of pandas is 134-140 days.
In its natural habitat, the panda moves well on steep slopes and easily climbs tall trees. In winter, it digs holes at the foot of large tree trunks and takes shelter there from bad weather, but does not hibernate. It makes its dens on the shady side of mountain slopes, and these dens can be useful to the bamboo bear for a long time.
The ability of the described animal not only to run fast, but also to roll down steep slopes “head over heels” is remarkable. In doing so, the panda presses its front paws to its eyes, protecting them, and presses its hind paws to its stomach. This is how it sometimes escapes from its enemies – red wolves or leopards.
To handle small objects, bamboo bears have developed a so-called sixth finger. This is nothing more than an elongated wrist bone. The sixth finger allows the panda to pick up objects from the ground that are very inconvenient for it, such as a match or a straw.
The measures taken recently to protect this rare animal have borne fruit, which allows us to speak of a slight increase in the population in Southern and Northern China, as well as in Northeastern Tibet.
