Rebecca Snyder visited Mei Lan
Rebecca Snyder, Zoo Atlanta’s Curator of Mammals, visited Mei Lan at the Chengdu Research Base of Giant Panda Breeding. She wrote the following about her visit:
I was in China the last week of October for a giant panda meeting. At the end of the trip I visited the Chengdu Panda Base and saw Mei Lan! He is doing really well! He was sleeping when I arrived, but his keepers tossed some fresh bamboo to him and called him to wake him up (he speaks Chinese now =) and that did the trick. He sat and ate bamboo for a long time while I took pictures and just enjoyed watching him. He looks great and seemed very content to me. His keepers said he’s eating well and is healthy. He is in the same enclosure that he’s been in since he was released from quarantine. All of the enclosures at the Research Base are nice, but Mei Lan’s area is especially large and lush.
It was interesting to see how popular he is with visitors. When visitors were told that the panda they were looking at was Mei Lan, most of them knew who he was and that he was born in the United States. When the Research Base staff told guests that I had known Mei Lan since he was born, I became pretty popular too and was asked to pose for pictures with some of the visitors. This reminded me of my old days in China. When I was collecting behavioral data at the Research Base and Chengdu Zoo for my dissertation, I used to be asked to be in pictures with Chinese visitors frequently. I think I appear in the photo albums of many Chinese families.
I spent most of 1997-1999 at the Chengdu Research Base and the Chengdu Zoo collecting data for my dissertation and other behavioral studies on the pandas. From 2000-2007 I went to Chengdu 1-3 times a year to train keepers and graduate students for data collection on studies. Chengdu was like a second home to me. Then I had a baby and took a break from traveling to China.
It had been four years since I’d been to Chengdu. It was great to go back and see all the changes in the city and at the Research Base. The developed part of the Research Base has nearly doubled in size since I was last there. I especially loved seeing my old friends. Some of them are pandas, like Yang Yang’s mom, Ya Ya. She was a favorite of mine even before she had Yang Yang. She was playing with two year-old cubs when I was there. I was so happy to see her playing with cubs. She’s such a great mom and my fondest memories of Yang Yang as a cub are of him playing with his mom. Some of my old friends are people. Two of my former Chinese research assistants have children now too. We spent most of our time talking about our kids. It was a joy to meet their children and to see my friends as parents. I hope to take my daughter to China in a few years, so that she can meet my friends and their children too. I hope Mei Lan will have fathered some babies by then that she can also meet!
Rebecca Snyder, PhD
Curator of Mammals
Source: Zoo Atlanta
