- [Narrator] Okay, so here's a hot take.
Pandas are overrated.
Sure, they're cute. So cute that
they show up in our logos, our movies, and even on our feet.
We are obsessed.
But every obsession has a dark side.
And this one starts in China.
(bubbly orchestral music)
The Chinese government owns nearly
all the giant pandas on earth.
And American zoos will shell out up to
a million dollars a year to rent just one.
Most sign 10 year panda diplomacy contracts,
and if any baby cubs are born,
they pay an additional one-time $400,000 baby tax.
That doesn't even include the extra costs,
like the bear's enclosure, medical care,
and mountains of bamboo, but zoos are far
from going bankrupt over pandas.
In 2012, attendance at the Edinburgh Zoo
rose 51% after pandas arrived.
And the National and Atlanta zoos saw similar increases.
While that money is great for the zoos,
it's not necessarily the best for the pandas.
Turns out, breeding pandas in captivity
is a completely different ball game from in the wild.
Threesomes are more or less the norm,
when it comes to wild panda sex,
something that's really difficult to replicate in zoos.
On top of that, wild pandas have a mating routine
that involves courting calls and scent
markings that can last weeks, but in captivity,
the chosen pair is often separated, right up to when
the female is ovulating, and as a result,
they rarely hit it off.
Regardless, we are dead set on keeping the species alive.
And why wouldn't we?
They're freaking adorable.
The round heads, seemingly large eyes,
and Cabbage Patch Kid bodies remind us of babies.
And that triggers a nurturing response.
Ultimately, what it boils down to is this:
People care about cute critters.
Period.
Mangrove forests, for example, support at least
1,300 animal species, with their roots, fruit, and branches.
So, saving them is like saving their entire ecosystem.
Pandas, by comparison, don't affect many other life forms.
So, saving them saves the pandas, but not much else.
Yet, it's the cuddly pandas who qualify as a poster species
for conservation organizations, not the mangroves.
And that's a problem.
Of the close to 20,000 endangered animal species,
only 80 get the lion's share of the already scarce funding.
And one study found that 61% of conservation
campaigns only raised funds for these celebrity species.
But as the World Wildlife Fund's logo,
pandas really hit the ultimate conservation jackpot.
When the World Wildlife Fund was founded in 1961,
it distributed all printed materials in black and white.
You know what else was black and white?
Pandas.
Pandas look just as cute in color
as they did in grayscale, so voila.
But the sad irony is the main reason pandas
were endangered in the first place is habitat destruction.
Yet, even with all their funding,
it's not enough to prevent further habitat decline.
Construction, logging, and an influx of tourists
continued to diminish and disjoint
the panda's natural habitat.
And if the whole point of these hefty funds
and breeding programs is to rebuild
wild populations, we're sucking at it.
In 2006, the Chinese government started
reintroducing pandas to the wild,
but only five of those seven are still alive.
In fact, of all the species listed as endangered
since 1973, 99% are still around,
but only 1%, one, have been successfully
rehabilitated and taken off the list.
Maybe it's time to end the era of pent up panda bears.
After all, we'll always have Kung Fu Panda.
(soft electronic music)