Taiwan-Japan Friendship in Action: Japanese Red Panda "A-Chang" Makes Its Taipei Debut

By MOOK Scenic Spots Travel Life Network, Reported and Compiled by Chen Guanxin

 

The Taipei City Zoo and Japan’s Tama Zoological Park signed a friendship agreement in November 1994 (the 93rd year of the Republic of China), with the goal of pooling transnational resources to jointly promote wildlife conservation. Due to the extreme difficulty of importing endangered species, after much effort, the famous red panda star "A-Chang" from Tama Zoological Park finally arrived in Taiwan this January. After successfully completing its quarantine period, it has now officially made its debut in the Temperate Animal Area.

The red panda "A-Chang," who came from Tama Zoological Park, immediately started exploring its new environment upon arrival—walking around, sniffing, marking its territory, and climbing on perches. If visitors remain relatively quiet, "A-Chang" will even approach the wire mesh for a closer look. Red pandas appear to have six toes on their front paws: five fingers in a row, plus a sixth digit (also called a pseudo-thumb) formed from a specialized wrist bone. This sixth digit on the wrist enhances the red panda’s ability to grasp food, and when paired with typically carnivorous teeth, it can even crunch through tough bamboo—making it seem like a food processing machine custom-built for bamboo plants. Both giant pandas and red pandas have evolved similarly shaped skulls, teeth, and front paws due to their bamboo-based diets, including almost identical ways of grasping bamboo—a phenomenon known as "convergent evolution."

 

Red 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. Red pandas often "wipe their bottoms" in specific spots because the scent secreted from their anal glands serves as a territorial marker. They also reinforce their territory boundaries using feces, urine, or scent glands on the soles of their feet. So next time you see a red panda wiping its bottom in a set location, you'll know it's marking its turf.

 

 

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