Everyone loves Pandas. They’re freakin’ adorable, and look exactly like the kind of thing you want wandering around your house, delighting children and keeping the bamboo stand out back nicely trimmed.
Unfortunately, actually caring for a Panda seems like the zoological equivalent of legal guardianship of the entire cast of Sex in the City.
Several of the huggable beast were caught in the horrible Chinese earthquake. They survived, but were so upset they wouldn’t eat until keepers provided a steady diet of games, bamboo, and hugs. Yes, here is an animal so sensitive, it will starve to death unless it hugs it out with a couple of humans. Talk about a survival strategy.
The natural conclusion from all this is that Panda’s are horribly maladapted to life on Earth. Au contraire. Any animal so cute as to trick vast swathes of the human population to spend money, time, and even risk their lives for their benefit has got to be some kind of Darwinian wunderkind.
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