00:03Today 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 ice and bamboo
00:46to look like flames on top of the cakes. We also provided them with some gift boxes that
00:52some of the enrolled students in our summer camp courses painted to look like gift boxes
00:56and we tucked a few little extra treats in there for the pandas as well.
01:01I was actually surprised. Sulein, I guess I shouldn't be surprised, this is her third
01:05cake after all. She was a little less than impressed. She did pay attention. She came
01:09out and gave the cursory lick and take a few pieces of yam out of the cake before
01:14she pushed it over and enjoyed her bamboo. Jinjin, on the other hand, had a ball. She was on the
01:20cake, around the cake, on her mother, near the cake. While mom was digging the goodies out
01:26with her big claws, she was able to benefit a little bit by the leftovers that Bai Yun left
01:31for her. She had a great time. All the giant pandas that I've had the pleasure of working
01:37with are very different in their personalities and Jinjin is probably the most precocious I've
01:42worked with so far, so I can't wait to see how she does when she's weaned. Giant pandas are an
01:55endangered species that we all are aware of. There's probably only about 1,600 of them, as
02:01far as we know, left in the wild, which is not enough really to sustain a viable population.
02:08Part 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
02:21part of their diet. So as people start to move into the bamboo forests, their habitat gets
02:26fragmented. That means that they have less bamboo. That means that they can't find each
02:31other. And giant panda females are only in estrus three days out of the year. So if they don't
02:35find a male in those three days, they've missed out on an opportunity to breed for that year.
02:40So it's very important the research that we in the United States and other facilities in
02:46China as well get as far as information from research we do with our giant pandas.
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