The world’s longest-living male giant panda under human care, An An (安安), has died at the age of 35, the Hong Kong zoo where he spent most of his life said yesterday.
An An’s health had deteriorated in the past few weeks, with a severe decrease in physical activity and appetite, and he was euthanized by veterinarians early yesterday morning, said a statement from Ocean Park, an amusement park and zoo.
The park said he was equivalent to 105 in human years and that “the difficult decision” to put him down had been made for welfare reasons in consultation with Chinese experts.
Photo: AP
Born in the wild of mainland China’s Sichuan Province, An An was one of a panda pair gifted to Hong Kong by Beijing to celebrate the second anniversary of the territory’s handover from Britain in 1999.
He and his mate, Jia Jia (佳佳), spent the rest of their lives in Ocean Park. They were a venerable pair — Jia Jia held the Guinness World Records for the oldest living panda and oldest panda ever in captivity when she died at the age of 38 in 2016.
A panda’s average life span in the wild is 14 to 20 years, the WWF said.
After Jia Jia’s death, her surviving mate led a rather solitary life.
He celebrated his 35th birthday last year alone with a Haagen-
Dazs fruit and bamboo ice cake surrounded by a number of handmade birthday cards from the park’s staff.
Pandas are a top choice of diplomatic gift from Beijing, and An An and Jia Jia enjoyed a fair degree of political clout for zoo-dwellers.
When they first arrived in the terrritory, then-Hong Kong chief executive Tung Chee-hwa (董建華) said that their names would inspire Hong Kong to be stable (“an”) and achieve great performance (“jia”).
When news of An An’s lack of appetite was announced last week, Hong Kong Chief Executive John Lee (李家超) called Ocean Park to express concern.
Ocean Park has set up condolence books in the exhibition hall that An An used to live in.
Within an hour of the park announcing his death, hundreds of tributes appeared under the social media post.
“Thanks for all the happiness you have brought us over so many years,” user “Tang Cc” wrote.
“I really can’t accept you passing away, but I also can’t see you suffering. I will be missing you,” user “Tuan Yuan Panda” wrote.
Malaysia yesterday installed a motorcycle-riding billionaire sultan as its new king in lavish ceremonies for a post seen as a ballast in times of political crises. The coronation ceremony for Malaysia’s King Sultan Ibrahim, 65, at the National Palace in Kuala Lumpur followed his oath-taking in January as the country’s 17th monarch. Malaysia is a constitutional monarchy, with a unique arrangement that sees the throne change hands every five years between the rulers of nine Malaysian states headed by centuries-old Islamic royalty. While chiefly ceremonial, the position of king has in the past few years played an increasingly important role. Royal intervention was
X-37B COMPARISON: China’s spaceplane is most likely testing technology, much like US’ vehicle, said Victoria Samson, an official at the Secure World Foundation China’s shadowy, uncrewed reusable spacecraft, which launches atop a rocket booster and lands at a secretive military airfield, is most likely testing technology, but could also be used for manipulating or retrieving satellites, experts said. The spacecraft, on its third mission, was last month observed releasing an object, moving several kilometers away and then maneuvering back to within a few hundred meters of it. “It’s obvious that it has a military application, including, for example, closely inspecting objects of the enemy or disabling them, but it also has non-military applications,” said Marco Langbroek, a lecturer in optical space situational awareness at Delft
The Philippine Air Force must ramp up pilot training if it is to buy 20 or more multirole fighter jets as it modernizes and expands joint operations with its navy, a commander said yesterday. A day earlier US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said that the US “will do what is necessary” to see that the Philippines is able to resupply a ship on the Second Thomas Shoal (Renai Shoal, 仁愛暗沙) that Manila uses to reinforce its claims to the atoll. Sullivan said the US would prefer that the Philippines conducts the resupplies of the small crew on the warship Sierra Madre,
AIRLINES RECOVERING: Two-thirds of the flights canceled on Saturday due to the faulty CrowdStrike update that hit 8.5 million devices worldwide occurred in the US As the world continues to recover from massive business and travel disruptions caused by a faulty software update from cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike, malicious actors are trying to exploit the situation for their own gain. Government cybersecurity agencies across the globe and CrowdStrike CEO George Kurtz are warning businesses and individuals around the world about new phishing schemes that involve malicious actors posing as CrowdStrike employees or other tech specialists offering to assist those recovering from the outage. “We know that adversaries and bad actors will try to exploit events like this,” Kurtz said in a statement. “I encourage everyone to remain vigilant