Taiwan-Japan Friendship in Action: Little Panda A-Chang Makes Debut in Taipei

Text by MOOK Travel Life Network, Chen Guanxin, compiled and reported

 

The Taipei City Zoo and Japan’s Tama Zoological Park signed a sister zoo agreement in November 1994 (93 in Taiwan’s calendar), aiming to integrate cross-border resources to jointly work on wildlife conservation. Due to the extreme difficulty of importing endangered species, after much effort, Tama Zoological Park’s famous little panda star “A-Chang” finally came to Taiwan this January. After smoothly completing the quarantine period, he has officially made his public debut in the Temperate Animal Area.

The little panda “A-Chang” from Tama Zoological Park immediately started exploring his new environment upon arrival—walking around, sniffing, marking territory, and climbing perches. If visitors keep their noise level down, “A-Chang” will even come closer to investigate the piano wires. Little pandas appear to have six toes on their front paws: five aligned in a row, plus a sixth digit (also called a pseudo-thumb) formed by a specialized wrist bone. This extra sixth digit on the wrist enhances their ability to grasp food, complemented by their typical carnivorous teeth, enabling them to even crunch through tough bamboo—making them look like a machine custom-built for processing bamboo plants. Both giant pandas and little pandas have evolved similar skull structures, teeth, and front paws due to their bamboo-based diet, including nearly identical ways of grasping bamboo—this is the result of “convergent evolution.”

 

Little pandas, which prefer to live in trees, are generally crepuscular, active during dawn and dusk. They sleep on tree branches during the day, and their strong, sharp claws help them climb with ease. Little pandas often “wipe their bottoms” in fixed spots because the scent secreted by their anal glands serves as a tool for marking territory. They also reinforce their territorial markings using feces, urine, or glands on the soles of their feet. So next time you see a little panda wiping its bottom in a specific spot, you’ll know it’s marking its territory.

 

 

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