Playing Bears

New Zealand Listener, Volume 1, Issue 21, 17 November 1939, Page 46

Playing Bears

T some time or other you’ve all played "bears." Perhaps it was a long time ago, and now you're growing up, or perhaps Daddy is still recruited in the evenings before bedtime for a romp through the luxurious jungles of the drawing room floor. It’s good fun, isn’t it? The little girl above is very lucky; she’s patting one of the rarest sorts of bear in the worlda Giant Panda. This Panda is only a baby, so you can imagine his size when he’s a " grown-up!" His home is the Children’s Zoo in the Zoological gardens in Regent's Park, London, and he’s come a long way to get there. Pandas have lived for hundreds of years among craggy rocks and trees by rushing streams high up on the Himalayas and in the

eastern part of mysterious Tibet. The Panda has long, thick, brilliant red-brown fur, black beneath; his limbs are stout, his tail bushy, with beautiful rings of red and yellow. He eats fruits, roots and parts of plants, and has broad teeth. He can suck water like other sorts of bear and can run like a weasel in a jumping gallop. He can climb trees almost as easily as you can slide down the bannisters. He hasn’t much of a voice, and has a call varying from a bird-like chirp to a loud squeal. The one above is called an Ailuropus melanoleucus, and with his white fur and black legs he is nearest to the other members of the bear family. The other kinds of Panda are also related to the raccoons of the New World.