Giant Pandas in China! Exploring the Shanghai Zoo

Ni hao from Shanghai, China. Today I am heading into Shanghai Zoo. I have one very specific goal in mind. That is of course to see pandas. Yay, going in. Wow I like it already. Over the past few years my interest in going to zoos around the world has been increasing. It's really interesting to go to different countries and see especially all of the native animals in that area and what could be more exciting than a panda in China. I have actually seen pandas on two other occasions. I saw one at, I saw a couple at the San Diego Zoo in California when I was like six years old and then Carl and I saw one in Hong Kong when we lived there. They are having the best day ever. Oh my gosh look at them sitting there. Look at all of them sitting there hanging out. They get some nice classical violin music. No wonder they're so chill. Looks like we're getting close to the pandas. In here I think this is where they are. There's another one out here but they're both sleeping. I want to see them playing. Something I learned today is that giant pandas do not hibernate like most bears hibernate for several months of the year but a giant panda will just move south to warmer climates during the winter. The sun's awake now. Apparently in the Chinese language the name for a giant panda is a cat bear. At least that's how it like literally translates into English. They don't really look like cats to me. This zoo is laid out in a very confusing way and the signage is not straightforward. You can literally walk around in a circle looking for the hippos as we have and follow the signs for the hippos and go in a circle around and around and around and never see the hippo. So yeah we're probably missing a lot of things. Oh my goodness look at these tiny monkeys. These people are feeding the tiny monkeys. Are they? Oh my goodness. Squirrel monkeys. People over here are just feeding them. Oh my goodness. Don't feed the monkeys. This enclosure for the monkeys looks so natural like it's just like normal plants growing with this jungle gym and trees. Not even a net around to keep them in. Doesn't look like a great enclosure to me. Hmm this is not a good enclosure at all. It's filthy. Yeah look how dirty the walls are like that's definitely like that would be super easy to clean. Why is this not being kept up? Oh hello little friend. Hello little friend. Look at these baboons. They're in this tiny little room. Whoa. Holy macaroni. There's definitely some complex hierarchy about who gets to eat walnuts all the time. So we were just in this Tamarin and Marmoset Hall and it was pretty grim in there. Like it looked like it hadn't been cleaned in a long time. Some of the enclosures were far too small for the size of the monkeys in there. But then we realized that they're kind of like holding pens almost and they cycled them around and we're figuring that they sometimes put different monkeys into this big enclosure. And probably that other one we saw with the squirrel monkeys too. That would make sense because if you look at it here like it explains all the different baboons. Yeah. Because I think they do cycle. Right. Well I mean if they do that that's not terrible. The cleanliness of those little enclosures was really really bad. That's probably the worst I've seen in a zoo in a very long time. Here we have an orangutan outside. Gigantic enclosure for him. We stopped at one of the little cafes for a snack. And surprisingly most of the things on this menu are like Western foods. Burgers, onion rings. The only thing that was like not normal for a Western menu is these pork skewers which we got. And two black coffees which is a rare thing to find in a restaurant. Look at these gorgeous trees. Every area there's a lot of different grass and trees growing around. He's cool. Where's he going? He looks like he's on a mission. Oh hello. Look at all these porcupines. They kind of look like caffeine bars except they're spiky. Probably. Yeah. Look at these swans. What? I know white swans and I know black swans but half and half. This aviary is really nice. Yeah. He's really friendly. Hello. Mr. Cassowary. Yeah. This is so large. He's a green sea turtle. But this one has to be like four feet long. Even with gloves. Oh he's flipping the rock around. That person should allocate three to five hours for this zoo and I think we're nearing six. It's actually quite a large zoo and we've gotten lost many times trying to look for things. So I don't know if we hadn't got lost all the times that we had. Maybe we would have done it in quicker time. We never did find the hippos in the end did we? Probably a lot. No and judging by the map we were right beside them. Yeah. And we saw the animal either side of the hippopotamus. It's not an easy animal to find. Right. I mean they could have just been like under the water and we just didn't see them as we walked by I suppose. At first I was a little unsure of the zoo because we saw the monkey enclosures pretty early on and they were quite grim. I think we were definitely looking at like the temporary holding enclosures for the monkeys and they were just like so dirty, so small, like not a lot of enrichment things for them. But we realized later that the enclosures are kind of designed to like cycle where they are. So we did observe one of the zookeepers like moving them to another room that was much better for their feeding and stuff. So it looks like they like move them into those little rooms temporarily while they clean the other enclosure and then put the food in there for them. Another factor is this zoo is 70 years old. Every zoo was like that 70 years ago just they still have some of those structures. After walking around for a longer period of time and looking at the other enclosures, most of them are pretty good actually I have to admit. Some of them could definitely be more sizable I would say. Like there is a lot of space in this zoo for sure. So I feel like there could be some construction of better enclosures of some of the animals spaces but a lot of other animals have amazing enclosures so it's hard to say. The main attraction here for us anyway is of course the giant pandas. Pandas are obviously just such iconic animals the world over but especially for China. Like this is where pandas come from, this is where they're native to. It's also really really difficult to see pandas in zoos because there's some like red tape around pandas. Technically China owns every single panda in the world so if a panda is in another zoo it's technically like on loan from Chinese zoos so they can recall the pandas at any time if they want. And yeah very few zoos around the world actually show pandas so yeah it's really rare to be able to see them and they're such cute ridiculous bears that it's really fun to see them when we can. And we really got a good view of that one giant panda munching on the bamboo so that was very satisfying to see. A couple of other notable animals that we saw in this one were the the two colored swans. I'm so confused about that I didn't know that existed in the world. The black leopard. I'm pretty sure that that's something that I've never seen before in any zoo. Oh the mandrills. The mandrills are fascinating. Yeah those are really really unique creatures. They don't even look like primates almost. They look like kind of a cross between some sort of hyena or something. Really wild looking animals I guess. Lots of cool things to see in the zoo for sure. The landscaping here is really beautiful. A really good combination between wild looking foliage mixed in with you know beautiful curated flower beds.