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Clarissa Sebag-Montefiore

Giant Pandas: Born Survivors 
by Zhang Zhihe and Sarah M. Bexell
Penguin
 
Clarissa Sebag-Montefiore 
Giant Pandas is a coffee-table book with a serious message. Giant pandas, we are told time and again, are more than cute mammals worthy of our adoration. Beyond their chubby cheeks, rotund bodies, and black-and-white fur coats, they are wild animals facing extinction.
Born Survivors aims to educate readers on the real panda. In doing so, it hopes to move the public to become partakers in conservation or at least to understand the issues at stake.
Born Survivors surpasses the now-cliched cutesy panda photo book in the information it offers. This is no surprise given its authors, Zhang Zhihe and Sarah Bexell, are both authorities on the giant panda. They dismiss commonly held falsehoods about the animal, in particular that the species has poor survival instincts and tools. Zhang and Bexell show that human beings' systematic destruction of the panda's natural environment has led to the creature's near downfall.
Other popular fictions are tackled in a two-page "myth-busting" flow chart. These include: "Giant pandas are lazy" (they actually spend 14.2 hours a day foraging for food; laziness is a result of captivity) and "It is okay to hold a giant panda cub if you visit China" (no, it is not).
Another persistent myth is that pandas are terrible at procreation. "Pandas have diminutive penises, but size is not important for reproduction," the book reads, adding that they are endowed with "sizeable testicles".
Born Survivors can sometimes be dry but this is made up for by glossy photographs and an easy-to-digest layout which packages information in charts, maps, and diagrams. What the text lacks in literary merit it makes up for by providing some fascinating facts.
These range from the social to the scientific. For example in times gone by the prized panda pelt was used as a sleeping mat which was said to predict the future and keep away ghosts.
The book also touches, albeit all too briefly, on panda diplomacy. It poses the question: why do humans feel such affection for giant pandas? One reason suggested is a phenomenon called neoteny, the retention of ostensibly immature or babylike characteristics into adulthood. These include round cheeks, big eyes, stubby limbs, a pudgy body and playfulness. Such attributes make it hard for humans not to tack their own emotional traits on the panda.
Zhang and Bexell are eager to use the giant panda as a springboard to teach readers about other animals who live in the same environment and face similar difficulties. These range from the gorgeously plumed golden pheasant to the less well-known takin, a 360-kilogram mountainous antelope-cum-moose which is verging on extinction.
The space dedicated to other animals in a book about the giant panda belies the authors' greater purpose. By increasing awareness of one species - in particular, the beloved panda - they hope, in turn, to foster awareness for all.


Book review: Giant Pandas

Lifestyle

Culture

Books

Giant Pandas is a coffee-table book with a serious message. Giant pandas, we are told time and again, are more than cute mammals worthy of our adoration. Beyond their chubby cheeks, rotund bodies, and black-and-white fur coats, they are wild animals facing extinction.
