The Most
Charismatic Creatures
in the World
Giant panda cubs steal scenes and hearts
By John Dunn
Photography by Caroline Joe
| From the day they arrived, Lun Lun, the female, and Yang Yang, the male, have been in the center of a media storm. Effortless scene stealers, the pair— in their short time in Atlanta, have charmed everyone who’s seen them. |
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| “Right now the panda population is not self-sustaining. It’s losing more animals than it’s gaining through breeding. There is a lot of missing information on this species. We will never succeed in saving the pandas unless we understand them.” |
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| “It is the finest panda exhibit in the world. China and the breeding center has a larger enclosure, but it’s not better. Zoo Atlanta’s is packed with technology.” |
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| “There are lots of ways for Zoo Atlanta to grow. We’ll grow by acquiring property, by engendering partnerships … we’ll grow in a variety of ways. Even though we’ve only talked about the panda exhibit being the size it is now, I hope it turns into a full-blown scientific breeding center.” |
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| “There are lots of ways for Zoo Atlanta to grow. We’ll grow by acquiring property, by engendering partnerships … we’ll grow in a variety of ways. Even though we’ve only talked about the panda exhibit being the size it is now, I hope it turns into a full-blown scientific breeding center.” |
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t took a journey of 7,526 miles and 15 years to bring a pair of giant panda cubs from China to Zoo Atlanta. But as far as Terry Maple is concerned, it’s the first step in a journey of many more miles.
The fanfare and scientific inquiry surrounding the rare pandas’ arrival gives Zoo Atlanta new momentum going into the new millennium and is helping Maple build the zoo of the future—a “truly scientific zoo.”
The new panda exhibit, combined with the crucial need for research on the gentle giants, will help make that happen, he says.
Effortless scene stealers, the pair—Lun Lun, the female, and Yang Yang, the male—charmed the media and public alike.
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| Georgia Tech doctoral student Rebecca Snyder (left) meets with the media after the arrival of giant panda cubs Lun Lun and Yang Yang in Atlanta. |
The pandas arrived on Friday, Nov. 5. On Monday morning, “Good Morning, America,” aired its show from the panda exhibit, followed by the “Today” show on Tuesday. While the cubs provided enough charm to hold their own with celebrities, Maple explained the pandas’ predicament.
There are only about 1,000 pandas left in the Chinese wilderness, and the 120 in captivity find breeding difficult. Meanwhile, the giant panda’s native habitat in central China’s highlands has been reduced to dwindling bamboo forests. “There is a lot of missing information on this species,” Maple says. “We will never succeed in saving the pandas unless we understand them.”
Zoo Atlanta’s research, Maple believes, will answer important questions.
“Right now the panda population is not self-sustaining,” Maple says. “It’s losing more animals than it’s gaining through breeding. We’ve got problems with these animals that I think are due to lack of socialization. We need to change some of the management programs, but we have to demonstrate first that we’re right about this. And that’s what our research is all about.”
Snyder, who received her master’s degree in psychology from Tech in 1996, has been researching the behavioral development of pandas at southwestern China’s Chengdu Zoo and Chengdu Research Base of Giant Panda Breeding. She is continuing her study at Zoo Atlanta.
“We’re trying to save animals, and only people can save animals,” Maple says. “You’re really working with people—social systems, government and business. It’s not different from other human activities. You have to work with people, and Rebecca has done a good job with that.”
In addition to running the zoo, Maple is a psychology professor at Georgia Tech, where he holds the Elizabeth Smithgall Watts Chair in Behavioral and Animal Conservation. He has nine graduate students working out of the Georgia Tech Laboratory for Animal Behavior.
“Rebecca was the first Georgia Tech graduate student to go to China,” Maple says. “She was the pioneer; she broke the ground. She laid the foundation. She did a great job.”
During her two-year study, Snyder was joined by other researchers, including Megan Reinertsen, also a Tech graduate student.
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| Rebecca Snyder explains her research on pandas on the “Today” show televised from Zoo Atlanta. |
The cub-mother relationship is important to the cub’s behavioral development and perhaps to its breeding successfully, Snyder says. “Possibly because captive pandas are separated from their mothers at an early age, they don’t have the opportunity to learn important social behaviors.”
Snyder has observed Lun Lun since she was three weeks old, and Yang Yang since birth. Both have distinct personalities, she says.
Lun Lun was more reserved, a shy beauty with the round face considered ideal by the Chinese. Born Aug. 25, 1997, she was taken from her mother at four-and-a-half months.
Yang Yang is playful, easygoing and self-confident. He was born Sept. 9, 1997, and allowed to stay with his mother for 13 months.
“I was there about an hour after Yang Yang was born,” Snyder says. “His mother was my favorite panda in our study, and I was excited about her giving birth. She was seven, and he was her first cub. A cub normally starts vocalizing loudly, and she looked at him in a surprised way, but she smelled him and picked him up almost immediately and started cradling him. She was a perfect mother.”
When he was removed from his mother, Yang Yang was placed with Lun Lun. Pandas reach adulthood at about five years of age.
Maple has worked since 1984— the year he became zoo director—to bring pandas to Zoo Atlanta. And in 1998, he reached an agreement with China to obtain the two panda cubs. The animals are on loan at Zoo Atlanta for 10 years, and perhaps indefinitely.
The panda exhibit includes an indoor habitat that is part of the Panda Research Station and Management Center. There is also an air-conditioned day room and three outdoor habitats, one of which is private.
“It is the finest panda exhibit in the world,” Maple says. “I don’t know of anything better. The Chengdu breeding center has a larger enclosure, but it’s not any better. Our facility cost $7 million.
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| Georgia Tech Professor and Zoo Atlanta Director Terry Maple talks about the panda exhibit for television reporters. Dr. Maple was instrumental in bringing the rare panda cubs to Atlanta. |
Zoo Atlanta board member William J. Todd, IM ’70, president of the Georgia Research Alliance, helped the zoo tap into the technological revolution.
“We invested heavily in distance learning, in computers and in video technology,” Maple says. “The state of Georgia contributed more than $2 million worth of technology. We wanted our education building to be connected to all of our exhibits through a series of cameras.
“The panda exhibit has 16 video cameras. We can follow the pandas no matter where they are. We can take that video image and we can play it over the Internet; we can play it back on distance learning; we can play it through satellite. We’ve got all these ways of getting it into schools. Education was a big part—sharing the information with the public was something that we wanted to do. The zoo is an instrument of education for the state.”
The technology and scientific research will take Zoo Atlanta to a new threshold, Maple says.
“We are building a zoo for the future,” Maple says. “The whole approach we’ve taken is to create an institution that is ready for the challenge of a new century, a new millennium.
“We have completely rebuilt the zoo. Virtually everything we found here in 1984, we’ve changed,” Maple says. Zoo Atlanta has partnerships with Georgia Tech, Emory University and the University of Georgia, particularly the veterinary school.
Tech’s association with Zoo Atlanta is mutually beneficial, Maple says. “Its value to Georgia Tech is great because of Tech’s worldwide reputation in problem solving—creative problem solving,” Maple says. “That’s what we do here. We solve a lot of complex problems—problems where science leads the way.”
From the start, Maple says the idea was to develop an electronic classroom approach, “an Internet approach. We want to keep pace with teleconferencing and being globally connected—that’s why we’ve invested in the technology. That’s the kind of institution we want to be, where everything is close at hand, where everyone understands the vision, and they grasp the future.”
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| Rebecca Snyder observes as pandas explore their new environments. |
Maple said the corpus funds would finance conservation programs in China that would enable Zoo Atlanta’s panda project to continue indefinitely. As part of the agreement for the loan of pandas from Chengdu, Zoo Atlanta has agreed to provide $1 million per year to support specific panda conservation projects by Chengdu’s scientists. Chinese research projects include field studies as well as studies of captive pandas, ranging from habitat surveys in the wild to genetics and reproduction issues in zoos.
In the future, the zoo will have to expand, Maple says.
“How we expand is not yet clear,” he says. “We need to acquire some property. One idea is to move human functions to the perimeter so the zoo can be more of a continuous island for animals. We could have fewer buildings and more gardens and pathways. We might develop an aquarium someday. There are many ways to grow. We’ll grow by acquiring property, by engendering partnerships and essentially growing the zoo. But we’ll grow in a variety of ways.”
“Even though we’ve only talked about the panda exhibit being the size it is now, I hope it turns into a full-blown scientific breeding center,” Maple says. “I think we could see that as a possibility. If our science is successful, it will surely evolve into something special.”
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| Science drives the vision, says zoo Director Terry Maple, whose research is now directed at saving pandas from extinction. |
irst, Terry Maple saved Zoo Atlanta. Then he saved Willie B., rescuing Atlanta’s favorite gorilla from a sterile tile cage equipped with a television and a dangling tire swing, and crowning him king of a majestic African veldt.
Now, can he help save the panda?
Consider this.
Taking the reins of what was one of the nation’s worst zoos was supposed to be a temporary job. At least that’s what Georgia Tech psychology Professor Terry L. Maple says. But one suspects that he would no more have allowed Atlanta’s zoo to slip through his fingers and into oblivion any more than he will allow pandas to perish.
Maple, who is president and CEO of Zoo Atlanta, is an innovator. He had a plan and a vision for a zoo even before he had a zoo. And he had a plan and vision for pandas long before he had pandas.
“I always imagined myself the director of a research lab that would have all kinds of exotic animals,” Maple says. “I envisioned that if I could create a connection to a zoo as my laboratory, that my students would really benefit from it. I had no idea that I would be asked to actually implement these ideas as an administrator.”
Maple joined the faculty of Emory University in 1975 to study the great apes because Emory had the largest collection of great apes in the world. His first visit to the zoo narrowed his research focus to Orangutans.
“I saw some Orangutans living in a group, which was very unusual in those days,” he says. “There were seven of them in two cages put together.”
Maple wrote Orangutan Behavior, published in 1980, based largely on his studies at the zoo. It was the first book on Orangutans to integrate what was known about them in the wild with what was known about them in captivity—it is considered a classic.
Maple then joined the faculty at Georgia Tech, which he says embraced his approach to applied psychology at the zoo. He is a professor in psychology at Tech and holds the Elizabeth Smithgall Watts Chair in Behavioral and Animal Conservation.
Maple’s research projects were well under way “when the zoo went in the tank.” In 1983, the Atlanta zoo was in such a dilemma that its membership was revoked by the American Zoo and Aquarium Association.
Maple became zoo director in June 1984. “I told the city when they hired me that I would not stop being a scientist, that I would never leave my tenured chair at Georgia Tech,” Maple said. “I didn’t want to leave my research behind. They said, ‘If you can do both, that’s okay with us.’”
Georgia Tech gave its approval. “They believed that I could sustain a scientific program and direct the zoo—although no one that I know has ever done that. They had to really affirm this appointment.”
On a visit to the Los Angeles zoo during the 1984 Olympic Games, Maple observed the enthusiastic public response to an exhibit of visiting pandas.
“No zoo was a greater underdog to acquire pandas than we were,” Maple says, because Atlanta’s zoo was both small and out of the good graces of the American Zoo and Aquarium Association.
Undaunted, Maple asked former President Jimmy Carter for help. Carter agreed to discuss pandas during his China visit with Deng Xiaoping in 1986, and overtures began at the top levels of government.
By coincidence, Maple was visiting Beijing in 1987 when Georgia Gov. Joe Frank Harris was there with an official trade delegation, and Maple was invited to attend the official functions of the Georgia delegation.
“I quickly learned that Zoo Atlanta, a tiny institution on the zoo world stage, was judged by the quality of its corporate and government friendships,” Maple says. “By this criterion, we were perceived to be much bigger and a whole lot better.”
Atlanta’s selection as the host for the 1996 Olympic Games also bolstered Zoo Atlanta’s profile. But negotiations were not easy.
“In China there were a lot of problems between the two ministries that actually make deals for pandas,” Maple says. “There is forestry, the conservation arm, and there’s construction, the entity that manages the zoos of China. They were both brokering panda loans, and they were often in conflict. We had to work through all those internal politics. And we had politics on this side, too.”
Maple and officials with the San Diego Zoo, who were also attempting to arrange a panda loan, worked with The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the Department of Interior to create new regulations for importing giant pandas.
“We were trying to create an environment where pandas could be loaned responsibly, where the conservation benefits would be clear and where research would be the straw that stirred the drink,” Maple says. “Fortunately, we managed to succeed.
“We had to qualify ourselves by virtue of the scientific work and the body of work we proposed to do. It challenged me in every way—every nerve and sinew was challenged to get it done.”
A new import permit for pandas was signed by the Interior Department on June 15, 1999, which, coincidentally, was Maple’s 15th anniversary as zoo director.
Since Maple was named director in 1984, Zoo Atlanta has been characterized by its vision, not its boundaries.
“We had big ideas,” Maple says. “We didn’t have a very big zoo. We’re only on 40 acres. We had Willie B. when I started here, but the big idea was to convince Yerkes [Regional Primate Research Center at Emory] to give us a group of gorillas, and to build the best gorilla exhibit in the world.”
Maple believed if he had enough gorillas, the zoo could build for a population rather than a group. “We designed multiple habitats—no one had ever done that before. It was everything that we expected and more. We’ve bred 12 gorillas in 10 years. Willie B. has been rejuvenated. He’s sired five offspring now. It’s unbelievable—way beyond our expectations. But it was because we took it down a scientific road, and from the very beginning science drove the new vision.”
The approach with pandas will be the same, Maple says. “Science drives the vision.”
“Research really dominates this place. I have this expectation that this little zoo can become the world’s first truly scientific zoo. I’ve seen zoos that have knocked on the door of science. I’ve seen zoos that had a scientific unit within. But for a zoo to be infused with science from the top to the bottom the way we envision ourselves is truly unique.” —John Dunn