00:00Today we're celebrating the birthdays of two of our giant panda cubs, Sulein, who was three
00:08years old yesterday, and her little sister, who is one year old today, Jinjin. Fayoon is their
00:14mother and they were both born here at the San Diego Zoo. We have the fortunate good luck to
00:29have a forage warehouse who made fantastic birthday cakes of ice this year like they
00:34do every year and they were three-tiered, took several days to make. They froze some
00:41of their food items inside, they put colors on, they even shaved some of the
00:45ice and bamboo to look like flames on top of the cakes. We also provided them
00:50with some gift boxes that some of the enrolled students in our summer camp
00:54courses painted to look like gift boxes and we tucked a few little extra treats
00:58in there for the pandas as well. Well I was actually surprised, Sulein, I guess I
01:03shouldn't be surprised, this is her third cake after all. She was a little less
01:07than impressed, she did pay attention. She came out and gave the cursory lick and
01:12take a few pieces of yam out of the cake before she pushed it over and enjoyed her
01:15bamboo. Jinjin, on the other hand, had a ball. She was on the cake, around the cake, on
01:22her mother, near the cake. While mom was digging the goodies out with her big claws,
01:27she was able to benefit a little bit by the leftovers that Bayou left for her. She had a great time.
01:32All the giant pandas that I've had the pleasure of working with are very different in their
01:39personalities and Jinjin is probably the most precocious I've worked with so far, so I can't
01:45wait to see how she does when she's weaned.
01:50Giant pandas are an endangered species that we all are aware of. There's probably only about
01:591,600 of them, as far as we know, left in the wild which is not enough really to sustain a viable population.
02:07Part of the reason that they're an endangered species is the proximity of man to their habitat.
02:15What some people don't realize is that giant pandas consume only bamboo. That's a major part of their diet.
02:22So as people start to move into the bamboo forests, their habitat gets fragmented. That means that they
02:28have less bamboo. That means that they can't find each other. And giant panda females are only in estrus,
02:33three days out of the year. So if they don't find a male in those three days, they've missed out on
02:38an opportunity to breed for that year. So it's very important the research that we in the United States
02:44and other facilities in China as well get as far as information from research we do with our giant pandas.
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