Pleasing The Picky Palates Of Pandas
Bamboo Donations Help Keep ZooAtlanta's Pandas Well Fed
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Play CBS Video Video Picky Pandas Two pandas at ZooAtlanta eat 40 pounds of bamboo apiece every day - and it has to be just the right kind or they won't eat it. Mark Strassmann has the story.
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(CBS)
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Giant Pandas Yang Yang and Lun Lun play at ZooAtlanta. The pandas are picky eaters. (AP)
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"So this will feed them for one day?" asks CBS News correspondent Mark Strassmann.
"One half, maybe… if they like it," says Rytis Daujotas, an animal nutritionist, of a recent harvest.
"They" are a pair of pandas. Lun Lun and Yang Yang are the star attractions at ZooAtlanta.
Come mealtime, they are absolute divas. Dr. Maria Crane, the zoo's senior veterinarian, describes their diet as "particular."
The pandas each eat about 40 pounds of bamboo a day, but zookeepers never know which variety the pandas want. And if's not fresh, forget it.
So the bamboo crew has to harvest 400 pounds of it a day.
This daily panda buffet could get ridiculously expensive. The zoo doesn't have the land or money to grow enough of its own bamboo — not on top of the $1 million plus a year it pays the Chinese government just for the chance to feed the pandas.
Enter the bamboo donors.Strassmann Blogs: The Bear Necessities
"Could you have ever imagined, looking at this, that this would be somebody's dinner?" asks Strassmann.
"No" says Joan Williams with a laugh.
Williams' church owns land that has plenty of bamboo. It's among several hundred Georgia landowners proving that there is such a thing as a free lunch.
"We've heard they're picky and we didn't know if this would be a variety they'd like," Williams says. But she also says she won't be offended if they don't like it.
Nothing goes to waste. Whatever doesn't please the palate of the pandas becomes a gift for the gorillas or the elephants — they'll eat anything.
Baby panda Mei Lan is just a couple of months away from eating solids. That means more guesswork for zookeepers — and more harvesting for the bamboo crew.
Luckily for the pandas, they're cute enough to get away with it.
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