The National Zoo in Washington is packing up its US-born panda cub Bao Bao (寶寶) for a one-way flight to China, where the three-year-old will eventually join a panda breeding program.
The cub will not have to worry about finding overhead bin space or dealing with a talkative seatmate on the 16-hour, nonstop flight that is to land today. She will be the only panda on the plane, traveling with a keeper and a veterinarian. Her accommodations are first class, too: a special metal crate the size of a double bed she can stretch out in.
A sticker on its outside announces its contents: “one panda.”
In preparation for the trip, keepers have a packing list of Bao Bao’s favorite foods: 25kg of bamboo, 2.3kg of apples and 1kg of sweet potatoes.
“Most of the flight, we hope she’s going to eat,” said panda keeper Marty Dearie, who was to travel with Bao Bao to China.
He said that pandas spend 13 to 16 hours a day eating.
Bao Bao was to depart the zoo yesterday morning and travel to Washington Dulles International Airport in northern Virginia.
Once Bao Bao arrives in Chengdu, China, she will be driven to her new home, one of the bases run by the China Conservation and Research Center for the Giant Panda.
Dearie is to briefly remain with her while she gets adjusted. In time, when she reaches sexual maturity, between five and six years old, she will become part of a panda breeding program.
The National Zoo said that Bao Bao is traveling now because it is better for pandas to travel in the winter months when it is cool.
Bao Bao delighted the zoo and panda fans when she was born on Aug. 23, 2013.
Her mother, Mei Xiang (美香), gave birth to her first cub, Tai Shan (泰山), in 2005, but then failed to get pregnant for years. Then, a cub born in 2012 did not survive.
Brandie Smith, the zoo’s associate director of animal care sciences, said that when Bao Bao was born a year later she remembers “five minutes of pure joy” followed by “weeks of sleeplessness and worry.”
Since then, Bao Bao, whose name means “precious treasure” in Chinese, has grown from about the size of a stick of butter to more than 90kg.
Her keepers describe her personality as “very independent,” sort of like a household cat.
Laurie Thompson, the assistant curator of giant pandas, said keepers have been preparing Bao Bao to leave for China since she was born, teaching her behaviors that will allow her Chinese keepers to do things like draw blood and perform ultrasounds.
Thompson said Bao Bao’s departure is “definitely bittersweet,” but her keepers “know she’s ready” to leave.
“We’re ready. We’ve done our part, and we’re ready to send her to China so she can have her own babies someday,” Thompson said.
With Bao Bao’s departure, the National Zoo will have three remaining pandas. The zoo’s two adult pandas, Mei Xiang and Tian Tian (添添), arrived on loan in 2000, but belong to China, as do any cubs they have.
The pair’s first cub, Tai Shan, returned to China in 2010. Their third cub, Bao Bao’s younger brother Bei Bei (貝貝), was born in 2015 and will remain at the zoo for now.
A total of four US zoos have pandas that are on loan from China. Pandas born in the US return to China, generally by age four.
MONEY MATTERS: Xi was to highlight projects such as a new high-speed railway between Belgrade and Budapest, as Serbia is entirely open to Chinese trade and investment Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic yesterday said that “Taiwan is China” as he made a speech welcoming Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) to Belgrade, state broadcaster Radio Television of Serbia (RTS) said. “We have a clear and simple position regarding Chinese territorial integrity,” he told a crowd outside the government offices while Xi applauded him. “Yes, Taiwan is China.” Xi landed in Belgrade on Tuesday night on the second leg of his European tour, and was greeted by Vucic and most government ministers. Xi had just completed a two-day trip to France, where he held talks with French President Emmanuel Macron as the
With the midday sun blazing, an experimental orange and white F-16 fighter jet launched with a familiar roar that is a hallmark of US airpower, but the aerial combat that followed was unlike any other: This F-16 was controlled by artificial intelligence (AI), not a human pilot, and riding in the front seat was US Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall. AI marks one of the biggest advances in military aviation since the introduction of stealth in the early 1990s, and the US Air Force has aggressively leaned in. Even though the technology is not fully developed, the service is planning
INTERNATIONAL PROBE: Australian and US authorities were helping coordinate the investigation of the case, which follows the 2015 murder of Australian surfers in Mexico Three bodies were found in Mexico’s Baja California state, the FBI said on Friday, days after two Australians and an American went missing during a surfing trip in an area hit by cartel violence. Authorities used a pulley system to hoist what appeared to be lifeless bodies covered in mud from a shaft on a cliff high above the Pacific. “We confirm there were three individuals found deceased in Santo Tomas, Baja California,” a statement from the FBI’s office in San Diego, California, said without providing the identities of the victims. Australian brothers Jake and Callum Robinson and their American friend Jack Carter
CUSTOMS DUTIES: France’s cognac industry was closely watching the talks, fearing that an anti-dumping investigation opened by China is retaliation for trade tensions French President Emmanuel Macron yesterday hosted Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) at one of his beloved childhood haunts in the Pyrenees, seeking to press a message to Beijing not to support Russia’s war against Ukraine and to accept fairer trade. The first day of Xi’s state visit to France, his first to Europe since 2019, saw respectful, but sometimes robust exchanges between the two men during a succession of talks on Monday. Macron, joined initially by EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, urged Xi not to allow the export of any technology that could be used by Russia in its invasion