I’ve just come back from visiting the newest scientific arrival in Second Life: yesterday the WWF opened up Conservation Island to visitors.
Conservation Island looks at first a bit like a huge jungle, complete with pandas, orangutans and mountain lions, but it actually has a lot more than that: go down into the town section and there are all sorts of displays with links out to their website, interactive animals and videos.
I’ve always been a furry-animal biologist at heart, so for the next few days I’ll be proudly wearing my free WWF T-shirt. I also got a free panda, who follows you around with helpful words of wisdom about saving the planet. I’m ashamed to report I have already killed him…
Chocolate cake is not the right thing to feed pandas! You have to feed them bamboo. I know this because I was awarded the Cub Scout
World Conservation Award when I was young.
I have seen a panda eat cake. But may be that’s not a chocolate one.
You’re right, pandas do eat bamboo! I know this because when I was little, London Zoo was in severe financial crisis, and put out an appeal for money and for food to feed their animals. They particularly wanted anyone with bamboo in their garden to cut it down and send it in for the pandas. Happily, our house had an entirely overgrown garden – full of bamboo! So for what felt like years, but was probably about three weeks before I got bored, every Saturday was father-daughter bamboo chopping time. With such excellent panda-feeding skills, perhaps I should have tried for my Brownie badge as well!
I went into Second Life to check out the pandas. I successfully befriended them, but couldn’t work out how to get them to follow me around (bit of a novice at this). However, I did manage to use the ‘wear’ functionality, allowing me to attach the panda to my left eyeball. I think my flapping ursine monocle scared away a few other people who came to see the pandas.
Oops
I heard a story that when Japan received their first panda from China (in the 70’s) the zookeepers had no idea what to feed it. So, as it was an important gift, they tried giving it the finest japanese food … fortunately for the panda, (who according to my japanese teacher “began to look very sad”) they got a Chinese caretaker to come over and disclose the secret of feeding it with such a common grass :)