Handpicked experience · Chengdu
Chengdu, China
Pandas sleep all afternoon because bamboo barely feeds them, and the red panda beside them invented the same false thumb independently.
Take a trip to the Chengdu Research Base of Giant Panda Breeding and see the adorable pandas in action
Watch the cuddly pandas eat, play, and sleep, as you learn about their habits and routines
Small and bushy tailed, you'll see fluffy red pandas playing or enjoying their meals
Admire a menagerie of other animals, including peacocks and black swans
The hours when the animals are actually awake
A species in a family of one, usually walked past
A guide who can explain what you are watching rather than point at it
A choice of two centres doing different work
A half day that leaves the afternoon free
A five-hour private morning at a giant panda centre near Chengdu — either the breeding and research base in the city's north or the rescue centre at Dujiangyan — with a guide, the enclosures and the red panda area.
Pandas sleep most of the day, and the reason is arithmetic rather than laziness. A giant panda has the digestive system of a carnivore — a short, simple gut with no rumen and none of the specialist bacteria a cow relies on — and it eats almost nothing but bamboo.
The result is that it extracts very little energy from a great deal of food. An adult gets through twelve to thirty-eight kilos of bamboo a day and spends ten to sixteen hours eating it, then conserves what it has gained by doing nothing at all. Keepers feed early, so activity peaks in the first hours after the gates open and falls away sharply by lunchtime.
A tour that starts late is not showing you lazy animals. It is showing you the same animals in the part of their day when the maths says they must rest.
The red panda is not a small relative of the giant panda, nor a raccoon. It sits in a family of its own, with no other living members, and its resemblance to its famous neighbour is a case of two unrelated species solving the same problem.
Both eat bamboo, and both evolved an extra gripping digit — not a real thumb but an extended wrist bone — entirely independently of one another. That two lineages separated by tens of millions of years arrived at the same false thumb for the same plant is one of the neatest examples of convergent evolution in mammals, and it is standing in front of you in a tree.
The Chengdu base is a breeding and research facility close to the city, which is why it is the usual choice on a half-day. Dujiangyan is a rescue and rehabilitation centre further out, holding animals recovered from the wild and those that cannot be released.
Neither is better; they do different work, and your booking specifies which one you are visiting.
Baby-panda photograph programmes have been suspended and reinstated repeatedly over the years and are always at the centre's discretion on the day. Request it in advance and treat it as possible rather than promised.
Bring a camera with reach — the animals are further away than photographs suggest — and shoes for paved paths with some gradient. Mornings in Chengdu are frequently damp and grey, which suits the pandas and does no harm to the photographs.
Open it to pick a date and work out the price.
What the fare covers, and what to budget for separately.
The practical detail, and the answers people actually ask for.
Because activity peaks in the first hours after the gates open. Keepers feed early, and by lunchtime most animals have settled.
Arithmetic. A giant panda has a carnivore's digestive system but eats almost nothing except bamboo, so it gets very little energy from a great deal of food.
Twelve to thirty-eight kilos of bamboo a day, over ten to sixteen hours, and then they conserve what they have gained by doing nothing at all.
Not remotely. It belongs to a family of its own with no other living members — it is not a bear and not a raccoon.
Both eat bamboo, and both independently evolved an extra gripping digit — an extended wrist bone rather than a true thumb. It is convergent evolution, not kinship.
Whichever your booking names. The Chengdu base does breeding and research close to the city; Dujiangyan is a rescue and rehabilitation centre further out.
Photograph programmes have been suspended and reinstated repeatedly and are always at the centre's discretion on the day. Request in advance and treat it as possible rather than promised.
Something with reach. The animals are further from the barriers than photographs suggest, and grey Chengdu mornings suit them better than they suit a phone lens.