Panda therapy to calm nerves

W henever life’s many stresses — induced by cricketing controversies Down Under or political assassinations in the subcontinent — threaten to overwhelm me, I give myself over to a bit of ‘panda therapy’ to calm my nerves.

It works like this: I tune into a television channel that beams live footage — I kid you not — of four pandas going about their activities of daily living in their indoor, climate-controlled enclosures at the Ocean Park in Hong Kong.

Every blooming day, from 9 am to 6 pm, four cameras track every blessed action of the four giant pandas — named An An and Le Le (male) and Jia Jia and Ying Ying (female). 

Now, many of you may have this mental image of pandas as cute, cuddly bear-like mammals that are frisky and animated, given to gambolling in the wild.

Not true. In fact, pandas are cute, cuddly bear-like mammals that are slothful in the extreme: they spend all of their day lazing about and scratching themselves, bestirring only to grab a fistful of bamboo shoots before they curl up and go back to sleep again. 

As I write this, I can see Ying Ying and Le Le stretched out on two levels of a bunk-bed. Jia Jia is sitting on a rock, chewing on some leafy shoots that a minder has brought her.

An An is out of camera range, so I don’t know what he’s up to, but going by the form book, he’s probably lying horizontal somewhere, scratching himself or snoozing.
In all the time that I’ve been watching this channel, never have the pandas done anything to break this sedate tranquillity of their everyday routine.

You might think that a male and a female panda, thrown into an enclosure together, would get up to a bit of no good. But it turns out that Jia Jia has reached the age of panda menopause, and her “mate” An An is a low-libido male.

Even Le Le and Ying Ying, who are much younger and were gifted to Hong Kong to mark the 10th anniversary of the territory’s handover to mainland China last year, aren’t exactly setting my television screen on fire with hot panda sex.

There’s a reason for that: the female panda is in heat for only about three or four days in a whole year.

At the panda research centre at Wolong in Sichuan province in mainland China (from where Le Le and Ying Ying came to Hong Kong), panda breeders have tried every trick in the book to get pandas to procreate, including slipping them doses of Viagra and getting them to watch ‘panda porn’.

(In fact, Ying Ying is believed to have been conceived after her parents watched footage of steamy panda sex.)

Given the pandas’ natural lack of interest in matters carnal — or in any other calorie-burning activity  — the Panda Channel is my channel of choice when my nerves get too frayed and need calming. Check http://now.com.hk/panda/ if you want to catch of bit of panda (in)action.

I have to run now: I can see Le Le clambering from his perch. Perhaps he’ll yet make a play for Ying Ying…