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PANDA

Escaping lockdown: Panda breaks out at Copenhagen Zoo

Humans are not the only ones tiring of confinement during the coronavirus pandemic -- a panda escaped from his enclosure at Copenhagen Zoo on Monday.

Published: 9 June 2020 20:00 CEST
Escaping lockdown: Panda breaks out at Copenhagen Zoo
Mads Claus Rasmussen / Ritzau Scanpix / AFP
Xing Er, a six-year-old male panda — soon to be seven — then took a tour of the zoo, which was closed at the time.
   
He was spotted on a surveillance video “leaving his enclosure, slipping under an electric fence”, zoo spokesman Jacob Munkholm Hoeck told AFP.   
 
The animal wandered around the zoo until an employee noticed it and called a security team.
   
“The veterinarian of the zoo anaesthetised the panda and he was brought back to the enclosure,” Hoeck said.
   
“There he was given an antidote and woke up a couple of minutes later.”
   
Xing Er was not harmed and there were no human injuries. 
 
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Bengt Holst, the zoo's chief scientist, said in a statement that security around the enclosure will be “carefully examined” to “make sure (it) doesn't happen again”.
   
Xing Er and his female mate Mao Sun — who did not take part in his escape — arrived in Denmark in April 2019, on loan from the Chinese city of Chengdu.   
 
They are a part of the “panda diplomacy” programme set up by China which consists of lending pandas in order to foster relations with trading partners.

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CHINA

Copenhagen Zoo cut Taiwan from panda map to please China

Copenhagen Zoo removed a map showing Taiwan as independent after complaints from China, before getting two coveted pandas on loan, letters leaked to the 24syv radio station have revealed.

Published: 8 August 2019 13:09 CEST
Copenhagen Zoo cut Taiwan from panda map to please China
Mao Sun, one of the two pandas romps around in Copenhagen Zoo in April. Photo: Mads Claus Rasmussen / Ritzau Scanpix
“The maps of China and the rest of the world at the panda enclosure are defective,” Chinese officials wrote in a letter to the zoo's management after inspecting yin-yang shaped facilities designed for the bears by star architect Bjarke Ingels. 
 
The map showing the animal's global distribution had marked the island of Taiwan in a different colour from mainland China, signalling its political independence. 
 
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After receiving the letter, zoo officials removed the map ahead of the delivery of the two pandas, Mao Sun and Xing Er, in April. 
 
“The Chinese made us aware that they consider Taiwan a part of China,” the zoo told the station.
 
Bengt Holst, the zoo's scientific director, added that zoo management had tried to sidestep the issue by replacing the sign with another showing the distribution of pandas in mainland China alone. 
 
“In this way we avoided taking a decision either way. We knew very well that no matter what we did with such a sign, we would come across as political, and we're not interested in doing that, so we made a completely sign to avoid that debate,” he said. 
 
 
 
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