Tokyo (EFE).- Thousands of Japanese people came this week to say goodbye to the panda Xiang Xiang at the Ueno Zoo (east of Tokyo), days before the animal is transferred to China, its new home, where they hope it can breed.
The panda, who was born in Japan on June 12, 2017, will be transferred to China on the 21st, which owns the animal, since according to its keepers, it would now be an opportune moment to have babies.
In order to avoid the stress of the bear due to the great interest of the Japanese public, the Tokyo Zoo has established a lottery to limit visits to about 2,600 daily. However, more than 120,000 people applied for the place for the next weekend.
“I have come to see Xiang Xiang’s parents and the twins today. Since Xiang Xiang was born five years ago, I come here once a week. In the time of covid, she came less, but even so she continued to come a couple of times a month, ”Yuriko Sano, 47, explained to EFE today.
For the Tokyo resident, who comes to the zoo decked out in various accessories and souvenirs from her visits to Xiang Xiang and other pandas, the news of the farewell is “sad,” but both she and other Japanese fans hope this means she can find mate and have babies in China.
“I am sorry that she is leaving, but on the other hand, I hope that she has her partner in China and if she can become a mother, that would be very good. I would be glad if I found out about this through the news. I think she grew up with a lot of love from her mother, and now I want to see her love happen to her children,” Yuriko added.
Xiang Xiang, which gets its name from the Chinese character for “fragrance”, was the result of the mating of the female Shin Shin and the male Ri Ri, a couple brought from China in 2011, and the first giant panda cub to debut before the Japanese public at Ueno Zoo since 1988.
At that time, the Tokyo Zoo already raffled off appointments to see the calf and received some 250,000 applications, making it one of the most popular animals in the more than five years it has spent on the premises.
“I have come with my daughter because the draw has touched me. The last time we saw her was recently, in October, but then she was sleeping and today we got to see her back,” explained Mrs. Ishii, 68, also a Tokyo resident.
Currently, 13 giant pandas live in Japan, although several of them will return to China in the coming weeks after their return was delayed by the pandemic. Among them, Eimei, a 30-year-old male panda, and eight-year-old twin pandas, Sakurahama and Momohama.
The giant panda is one of the most vulnerable species in the animal kingdom due to the difficulty it has in reproducing, a problem derived from habitat loss and inbreeding, and due to the short fertile period of females, about 36 hours a day. anus.
According to the latest count by authorities in China, where most of the giant pandas in the wild live, the country has 1,864 giant pandas and 673 live in captivity worldwide, as announced in October 2022.
