In Memory: Quan Quan (better known as #20)
July is always a happy month for captive giant panda breeding – it’s the month when the annual giant panda birthing season begins. By the third week of July this year, four cubs had been born, including twins in Beijing Zoo and one each at Bifengxia Panda Base and Chengdu Panda Reserve.
Amidst the happy news, there was sad news.
A friend sent me an email on 23 July 2010. Her short message – “Very sad, #20 is dead.” – was accompanied by a link to a news item that a panda named Quan Quan in Jinan Zoo had died suddenly on the night of 22 July 2010.
In this, and all subsequent news reports, the panda is identified as Quan Quan. If I hadn’t received my friend’s email, I would not have known Quan Quan was #20. To many of us, she was better known as #20. This was the name I first knew her from Panda Nursery, a National Geographic documentary about swap rearing. And to me, she will always and forever be #20, or in Mandarin, 二十号 (Er Shi Hao).
Subsequent news reports confirmed that #20 had died from inhaling toxic fumes that came through a connecting pipe from a nearby former air raid shelter. It was a cooling system used by many Chinese zoos unable to afford proper air-conditioning for their animals in summer; in this case, Jinan Zoo used it to cool #20′s indoor enclosure. This time, however, it proved fatal; new tenants of the shelter were disinfecting the place, perhaps not knowing that the fumes would be piped into another enclosure, and not just any enclosure, but one that housed a member of the rarest of rare, and endangered, animals.
A question hanging over #20′s death is whether the zoo knew about the new tenants disinfecting the shelter the evening of 22 July 2010. The zoo does not own the shelter, so the tenants might not have been obligated to inform the zoo. But #20′s death has highlighted the lack of proper facilities and resources, as well as the management of animal care, in many zoos in China. Personally, I hope her tragic death will not be in vain but will lead to new and stricter animal care regulations put in place in all zoos.
That evening, to commemorate #20′s passing, I had watched my copy of Panda Nursery. Of the three black and white stars in the documentary – #20 and her twins, Lin Her and Lin Hai (renamed Xiang Xiang and Fu Fu) – two are no longer with us. Besides #20, her elder twin, Xiang Xiang, had died in 2007. He was the first captive giant panda to be released back to the wild, an experiment with a tragic ending when he was found dead with injuries believed to have resulted from fights with other wild-born giant pandas. His twin, Fu Fu, is living at the Fuzhou Panda World, in Fuzhou, China.
Panda Nursery shows #20′s twins each spending time with her separately up to the age of three months (when one was with her, the other would be in the nursery) when they were both presented together to her. From then on, she had to take care of both cubs. Initially, she favoured one over the other, but eventually got used to both of them. However, by the time she was used to having two cubs, it was time to wean them from her. The documentary has a poignant scene showing them together one last time. Here is perhaps the most touching moment from that scene:
Translated caption: “This is #20′s last time with her twins”
Rest in peace, #20, and Xiang Xiang. Your deaths will not be in vain.
