Who's a pretty boy then?

Panda sanctuary outside of Chengdu - end of November

Having been in China for a few weeks and not seen anything cuter than Ed in the morning (not a pretty sight), we headed to the panda sanctuary. We set out in the early morning darkness in order to arrive in time for their morning feed and were lucky enough to see a giant panda within a few feet of us. Having taken a whole load of pictures of this beauty up close, and a video, we moved on round the park. I read in the guide book that you'd be lucky to see five pandas during the visit, well, luck must have been in our stars, and I counted twenty. Giant adults, adolescents, cubs and red pandas.

I loved the giant pandas but must say that the cubs were my favourite. On spotting them, I suddenly turned into a soppy girlie girl and started cooing with delight. They were just soooo cute!


All of the pandas we saw were either eating or chilling, in trees or on the ground, which may lead you to thinking that they're lazy and greedy. However, despite being classified as a carnivore, the panda's diet is primarily herbivorous, and they almost exclusively eat bamboo. This is an recent evolutionary adaptation and is pretty unfortunate as they can't properly digest bamboo to get sufficient energy and therefore have to spend most of their days this way. If only Ed had such an excuse.