Toronto Zoo’s giant panda exhibit now open to the public
Posted May 18, 2013 9:53 am.
This article is more than 5 years old.
The pair of giant pandas on loan from China had their first chance to meet the Toronto public Saturday.
The Toronto Zoo’s new panda exhibit has officially opened to the public, nearly two months after the pandas arrived in March on a special flight from China.
The pandas were held in quarantine for some time when they first arrived as zoo veterinarians checked them over and as they adjusted to their new surroundings.
Thousands of people lined up to get their first look at five-year-old Er Shun and her prospective mate, four-year-old Da Mao.
Demand for all things panda was so high that the zoo’s gift shop had to order 1,500 more stuffed animals just to keep them in stock.
The pandas are kept in two separate living areas, as pandas are solitary creatures by nature but will be brought together in the hopes that they will breed.
“They only have three days that they can breed and that’s a tight timeline,” Cynthia Shipley with the Toronto Zoo told CityNews. “Next year we’ll be able to determine if we’ll be doing breeding with them. We may do artificial insemination.”
The pandas will spend five years at the Toronto Zoo before they are moved to the Calgary Zoo, which has announced a major redesign to house the new visitors.
The Toronto and Calgary Zoos each played host to pandas in 1985 and 1988, respectively, while another couple took up a brief residence at the Winnipeg Zoo in 1989.
China’s loan of the pandas to Canada sends an important diplomatic message that ties between the two countries are stable and continue to grow stronger.
With files from CityNews.ca staff
