WATCH: Very Polite Pandas Sit Elegantly (Sort of) Around a Dinner Table
WATCH: Very Polite Pandas Sit Elegantly (Sort of) Around a Dinner Table
Four giant pandas at a zoo in China have been recorded having dinner together around a table—sitting in chairs, chatting politely, and basically setting a new standard for brunch manners.
In a video shared on Twitter, the pandas sit back in their chairs, almost like people, while they daintily munch on apples at the Chongqing Zoo in China. They’re frequently captured on camera pulling stunts like these, according to The Telegraph. A few months ago, a 3-minute video published on YouTube shows four pandas sitting around the same table to munch on bamboo and watermelon.
It’s hard not to find pandas unbearably adorable, especially when they do things like this. Occasionally, videos of people cuddling cubs professionally go viral on social media. In 2016, it was widely reported that a panda conservation organization was hiring a full-time cuddler to snuggle and play with panda cubs year-round.
Taking care of the bears is important business, too, even if it’s fun. It’s estimated that there are about 1,800 pandas in the wild and 500 in zoos, according to National Geographic, and just a handful of those can be found in zoos outside of China. There are only three pandas in the whole world that don’t belong to the country, National Geographic reported in a recent story about Xin Xin, the last panda in Latin America, who lives in the Chapultepec Zoo in Mexico City.
Xin Xin is the granddaughter of two pandas gifted to the zoo from China in 1975, which at the time was a frequent diplomatic custom. But that practice ended in 1984. Today, Nat Geo wrote, “zoos pay fees of up to $1 million a year per panda pair, and any foreign-born offspring are considered Chinese property and must be returned.”In the United States, you can find giant pandas at the San Diego Zoo, Memphis Zoo, and Zoo Atlanta, and Smithsonian National Zoo in D.C., which recently posted some super-cute baby panda footage of its own.
