Jia Jia takes record for oldest panda
Print Edition
Hong Kong’s Jia Jia became the oldest giant panda in captivity yesterday when she turned 37.
The equivalent of more than 100 years old in human terms, Jia Jia was presented with a birthday cake made from ice and fruit juice with the number 37 carved on top in her enclosure at the city’s Ocean Park.
Blythe Ryan Fitzwilliam, adjudicator of Guinness World Records, was at the park to witness the occasion. He said it was an “amazing longevity achievement.”
Jia Jia was born in the wild in southwest China’s Sichuan Province in 1978 and was given to Hong Kong in 1999.
The previous record was held by a male panda called Du Du, who was also caught in the wild and died in July 1999 at the age of 36 in a zoo in central China’s Hubei Province.
Vet Paolo Martelli said Jia Jia is still “moving about” though she has suffered from cataracts and high blood pressure.
“She is sleeping more, so is doing everything less. But she is ageing gracefully, just like your grandma,” he said.
Because she eats less bamboo she relies on fiber supplements, Martelli added.
Jia Jia, whose name translates as “excellence,” picked at fruit slices and bamboo around the ice cake to celebrate her day.
Although the exact birth dates of Du Du and Jia Jia are not known, Guinness said they’d concluded that Jia Jia had claimed the title by a few months.
There are fewer than 2,000 pandas left in the wild, according to the World Wildlife Fund, as their habitats have been ravaged by development.
Roads and railways cut through the bamboo forests they depend upon for food.
Given their low birthrate, captive breeding programmes have become key to ensuring their survival.
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