Monday, April 6, 2009

This is not from the Onion

Taiwan-China relations were dealt a severe setback yesterday when it was found that Taipei Zoo’s “pandas” are not what they seem.

Zookeepers discovered at feeding time yesterday that the two pandas are in fact Wenzhou brown forest bears that had been dyed to create the panda’s distinctive black-and-white appearance.

The Taipei Zoo’s head of ursidae ex-procyonidae care, Connie Liu (劉長春), said she became suspicious when the pandas, Tuan Tuan (團團) and Yuan Yuan (圓圓), began to spend almost all of their waking hours having sex. Pandas are notorious for their low libidos, which make them difficult to breed in captivity.

“Let’s just say Tuan Tuan and Yuan Yuan would tuan yuan at every chance,” said Liu, referring to the combination of the panda’s names, which means “to reunite” in Mandarin. “They would do it doggy-style and every armchair zoologist knows that pandas favor the missionary position — when they do it at all. Their behavior caused chaos. Children screamed and parents became irate.”


Less humorous, but equally valuable panda insights can be found here. (And a full explanation, as noted by Michael in the comments section, can be found here.)

1 comment:

J. Michael Andresen said...

No fair posting April Fools' Jokes on April 6! I was truly shocked at first thinking that China would do something so diplomatically dangerous, and amazed that I hadn't heard the story from elsewhere. Heh.