Weighing Zoo Atlanta's Pandas
One thing the keepers have to do with the giant pandas is weigh them twice daily. Believe it or not, the weights of the adult pandas can change as much as 11 kg, or 24 pounds, from morning to night. It may sound like a pain to weigh them twice daily, but it is actually an easy procedure. We simply shift the panda away from the weighing area. We then put some biscuits and fruit on the scales, leave the area, and shift them back in. The pandas will go right to the scale, sit and start eating. They will sit there for several minutes, giving us time to run to the other side of the building to read the results. Everything was nice and easy, until now. Po has determined that his favorite place is back in the corner behind the scales. This would normally not be an issue, but it is a tight squeeze and he ends up pressing on the scales, rendering them inaccurate. Today, I weighed Po as usual. It was very easy and he performed this task for me flawlessly. When it came time to weigh his mother, however, it was a different story. After weighing him, I placed his bowl, with biscuits, on a far corner of the scale. He came over like he was supposed to and stayed with his bowl like a good boy. I then proceeded to place Lun Lun’s biscuits on the scales platform and hurried to tare the scales before letting Lun Lun into the den. Po was still being a good boy, sitting with his biscuits, that is, until I let Lun Lun into the den. Lun Lun came in like normal and climbed right up on the scales as usual. I then had to race to the scales reader, to get Lun Lun’s weight, before Po found out that there were more biscuits on the scales. Needless to say, I didn’t make it. Po was just a little faster than I was. When I got back to the weigh area, Po had absconded with several of Lun Lun’s biscuits and had wedged himself in the corner again. He refused to leave the corner for the next 30 minutes. While in itself all of this is not a big deal, it is just one of those things that puts us behind schedule in the morning. If Po wasn’t so cute sitting in the corner, I think it would have bothered me a bunch more. Oh well, what are you going to do? I was finally able to get a weight on Lun Lun, but it was definitely much more difficult than it should have been.
Kenn Harwood
Zoo Atlanta’s Lead Keeper of Carnivores
Source: Zoo Atlanta
