I’m back in Chicago, and let’s have some squee to end the week on Friday the 13th. Matthew Cobb came up with this video of juvenile pandas playing on a slide. This was taken at the Chengdu Panda Center, a place I visited in China about eight years ago. I actually got to pet one!
Don’t they get splinters? (I notice the keeper doesn’t slide down on her butt!)
I am willing to entertain the possibility that baby pandas are the cutest animals in the world, exceeding even kittens.
This is progress.
Blasphemy!! Shun, shun the unbeliever!!
Teh kitteh shall smitez from teh ceiling!
The Chinese for panda is 熊猫 (xiong mao), or bear-cat. So it’s understandable that a cat person would like the babies.
“His” butt? They never focus on the keeper, but she looks like a woman to me.
Fixed, thanks. I watched this too early in the morning!
No worries!
Watching this was a lovely way to start the day! Splinters aside, I think the keeper doesn’t slide because she would end up under a pile of pandas – they are going down fast.
No doubt, but being under a pile of pandas might be fun.
I do think the slide looks pretty well sanded.
I want that job! Running around with baby pandas instead of hanging out behind a desk: nice!
+1
I think Basement Cat wants a word with you.
I am willing to entertain the possibility that baby pandas are the cutest animals in the world, exceeding even kittens.
I’m sorry, but have you seen red pandas playing in the snow?? Link
“I am willing to entertain the possibility that baby pandas are the cutest animals in the world, exceeding even kittens.”
Must be a pre-breakfast blood sugar crash. Here, have some scrambled eggs with green chiles and nopalitos. Mental clarity will return.
I think our southwestern Procyonids (raccoon, coati, and ringtail) all have a higher CQ (Cuteness Quotient) than pandas. The ringtail may even approach kittens in this respect.
Otters. Otters are the cutest babies in the universe! Adults are pretty damn adorable too.
I love my kittehs, though.
Which reminds me of some curious behaviour that my wife and I saw at London Zoo in March.
A female otter kept rolling onto her back, clearly exposing her teats, but when her numerous kittens came close to her she turned on them, snapping and snarling (I can’t quite remember now the exact sound she made) until they backed off. This was repeated several times.
Is this normal weaning behaviour?
/@
Why are we and pandas wired to feel pleasure at sliding down a precipice? Is it a byproduct — or adaptive?
Good question. Perhaps the best way to answer it would be to consider why, neurologically, we feel pleasure on a slide. Is it because the slide simulates a dangerous situation, but we aren’t actually in any danger? Does physiological arousal followed by relief feel like pleasure? Is the pleasure we feel actually a form of elation?
It seems to me this might be part of it. Being accelerated by an outside force is thrilling, but less so once you get used to it, and even less so when it’s part of some routine operation (like flying a plane). I think some sense of being out of control is required.
This is far from a detailed account of how elation actually works, but if this hypothesis is true, it makes it seem like thrilling activities are a byproduct of the way our brains work, and how they respond to dangerous or out-of-control situations. I don’t see this sort of thing as being selected for.