Bebe Reincarnated

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It is with great sadness that I inform you, my darling Bebe and the founder of www.ErikaJordan.org has left this world. Only 11 years young I left her in what I thought was a fancy dog hotel but during the 5 days I was gone she had a seizure followed by a heart attack. My world is less colorful and although I’m learning to live with the pain I will never stop missing her.

A less unfortunate eleven-year old; Shin Shin gave birth to a cub in Ueno Zoo in Tokyo earlier this week.
This is the first baby panda in the zoo in five years!

As you might have heard pandas have been downgraded from endangered to vulnerable. Hopefully the trend continues until everyone has bamboo trees in their yard.. Ok maybe not, but a girl can dream.

Panda Sex by Erika Jordan

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panda-dreaming

The female giant pandas ovulate only once a year (during the spring) and only for 2 to 3 days each time. The female giant pandas will leave their partners after mating and rear their cubs alone.

Giant panda gestation is about 83 to 200 days, and cubs usually were born in hidden hollow trees or natural dens, where the branches and dry hays well-prepared by mother pandas are available. Normally, the giant pandas are monotocous and rarely multiparous. Even the female giant pandas have two cubs at one birth in the wild, they would choose to take care of one and abandon the other.

Owing to feeding on bamboos, the giant pandas need to spend long time in eating to get enough energy each day, and they will leave their cubs to hunt for food for 2 to 4 hours each day even in their child-care periods.

Erika Jordan

Pandas Like Being Alone by Erika Jordan

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panda

Panda families don’t live together. They are solitary, each female having a well-defined range. Males generally live apart, except for in the short breeding season (March to May), when they compete for female attention. Females raise the cubs alone. With their lack of desire to be around each other you can see why the panda is endangered.

With an uncommunicative and eccentric temperament, the giant pandas prefer the freedom of being alone, and sleep in the daytime and look for food in the night. After they spend a month with their partner during mating season, they leave a post it and go about their lives.

They love climbing trees and use their climbing skills to evade stronger competitors. The giant pandas also walk into the valley, sneak into mountain villages or residences. They play with round- shaped utensils as toys and later abandon them in the wild. Once in a while, the giant pandas also show their kindness to sheep and pigs by sharing food and rooms with them.

The giant pandas have a very docile temperament in most cases, and they often lower their heads or shade their faces with front paws to conceal their true appearances when they come across a man for the first time. Seldom actively attacking men or other animals, the giant pandas always evade them when coming across them. However, the giant pandas consider their cubs holy and untouchable once they give birth, and they will burst into rage at such small things as their cubs being watched by visitors. The giant pandas can stretch their paws and open their mouths wide like cats to make themselves more comfortable, and they can also shakewater off themselves like dogs after a heavy rain.

Life Of A Panda by Erika Jordan

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A baby panda’s growing process is interesting, but very difficult, because they are extremely fragile and can easily get sick and die. At breeding centers 90% of baby pandas survive nowadays, compared to no more than 30% in the 1960s.

 

July to September is the period when mother pandas give birth. Baby pandas stay in their mothers’ uterus for just 3 to 5 months. All pandas are born very small.

When giant pandas are born, they are tiny, blind, and pink, with few hairs. The average weight is 0.2 pounds, only 1/900 of their mother’s weight (compared to around 1/20 for humans). The lightest one on record was only 0.1 pounds, and the heaviest one .5 pounds.

The limbs of newborn pandas are so weak that they are not able to stand at all. For 2 months after birth, baby pandas basically only feed on milk, sleep, and poop.

The First Week:

Blackish hairs start to grow on their ears, around their eyes and shoulders.

After 1 Month

Black hairs grow all over the neck and chest, and they have bigger dark circles around their eyes. At the same time, white hairs also begin to grow, which give the panda its distinctive black and white look. A month-old panda is around 4 lbs.

After 3 Months

Their limbs become stronger. They can walk as far as 3 feet, but staggering, and sometimes falling over. They weigh about 11–13 lbs by this time.

Lovely baby panda

After 4 Months

The pandas start to run a few steps, and love rolling around on the floor.

After 6 Months

They begin to eat bamboo. Their growing process gets faster and male pandas generally develop faster than female pandas.

At One Year Old

Panda cubs are weaned by the time they are one year old, and continue to live with their mothers for about half a year, until the mother panda is pregnant. If she doesn’t conceive, the mother panda will live with her cub for two years then leave the cub to fend for itself.

Erika Jordan

Erika Jordan

How Pandas Communicate by Erika Jordan

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Because of their low-energy diet they avoid stressful situations and exertion, preferring shallow slopes and solitary living. Giant pandas spend their lives eating bamboo and walking around the forest floor. They are good climbers and can also swim. They don’t build dens (except to put cubs in) or hibernate. If it is too cold up in the mountains they head down to the valleys where it is warmer. They haven’t figured out how to text message so they communicate in other ways.

They use scent markers to avoid one another. Giant pandas don’t roar like other bears. Pandas have 11 different sounds. These include a barking sound (used to intimidate another panda), a goat-like bleating sound (during the reproductive season), honking, huffing, barking and growling. Cubs have also been known to make a whimpering sound.

Eating Habits Of Pandas by Erika Jordan

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Bebe would love to spend 14 hours a day eating but since she can’t she lives vicariously through the panda. A giant panda needs about 12 to 38 kilograms of food per day, approximately 40% of its own weight. The giant pandas prefer eating tender stems, shoots and leaves of bamboo, all of which are richer in nutrition and lower in firbins.

Pandas eat golden bamboo. Each season they eat the best bits. In April the best bit is the woody part. At other times they eat the tips and disguard the wood.

Wild giant pandas eat grasses, wild fruits, insects, mice, even lambs in the surrounding villages and leftovers in rubbish dumps as well.

You can watch pandas LIVE: Panda

Erika Jordan

Erika Jordan

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Sleeping Panda by Erika Jordan

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baby panda

One of the pandas favorite activities is sleep! (I can relate) In the wild pandas sleep for 2-4 hours between its 2 meals. Their favorite sleeping poses include lying flat on their backs (sometimes with their hind paws on the tree with their front paws shading their eyes) lying on their sides, lying on their stomachs or stretching their paws and rolling themselves up into balls In the zoo the keepers feed giant pandas twice a day so pandas spend most of their free time in rest.