Enthused students tell of projects to help conservation
Ocean Park's giant panda An An has a puzzling new toy aimed at stimulating mind and body.
It is a 60cm food-filled plastic cylinder lined with holes that 19-year-old An An has to manipulate to extract food. By rolling it this way and that, he can get small pieces of apples, carrots and biscuits.
The puzzle feeder was designed by Vivien Bao Weiwei and Angela Lam Ka-ki from the University of Hong Kong's department of ecology and biodiversity, one of four conservation projects sponsored by the Ocean Park Conservation Foundation.
In their search for the perfect item to stimulate notoriously lazy pandas, Ms Bao and Ms Lam designed three types of toys-the puzzle feeder, a sack and a bell - and tested them at Wolong Nature Reserve in Sichuan .
The puzzle feeder, which on average has pandas working for 45 minutes to extract the food, turned out to be a hit.
'If the pandas spend too much time alone and have nothing to do, they can even hurt themselves,' said Ms Bao, who is planning a career in nature conservation. 'The toy will develop their ability to get food ... and have fun.'
