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Head South To Washington D.C. To Visit The Newest Member of The Smithsonian’s National Zoo

Mar 11, 2022 12:31PM ● By Virginia Dean

New England is home to several fine zoos and animal education centers whose focus is to help protect endangered species and gain a better understanding of the animals around us. A visit to one of our many New England zoos is a great way to spend a Saturday, weekend, or family vacation, making an excellent field trip for children any time of the year.

Some notable nearby zoos include the Franklin Park Zoo in Boston, MA; Southwick’s Zoo in Mendon, MA; Stone Zoo in Stoneham, MA; Charmingfare Farm in Candia, NH; Squam Lake Natural Science Center in Holderness, NH; and ECHO Leahy Center for Lake Champlain in Burlington, VT. 

Traveling much farther south, but so worth the trip, is the Smithsonian’s National Zoo, one of Washington, DC’s most popular tourist destinations and also established as a place in which to house endangered species and to conduct research. The Zoo is one of the few free centers in the country.

A trip to the Zoo over New Year’s by this writer resulted in a visit with a panda cub who has become a celebrity worldwide. Named Xiao Qi Ji (“Little Miracle”) by the public, this tiny, hairless pink cub weighed just ounces - the size of a stick of butter - in August 2020 and brought joy and relief for millions during the pandemic. He was a miracle because he was the result of using 800 million 5-year-old frozen sperm to help his aging panda mother, Mei Xiang, defy the one percent odds that she would give birth. 

Now weighing 110+ pounds, Xiao Qi Ji is smart, funny, a good listener, playful, and an excellent tree climber. He is learning behavior modification so that his keepers can examine him regularly for his health care, can extract food from puzzle feeders (his mother was a great teacher), and is beginning to eat what will become 80 pounds of bamboo daily when he’s an adult, which is around 4-5 years old. Adult male giant pandas in human care typically top out around 300 pounds, so he’s still got some growing to do.

Xiao Qi Ji and his parents, 24-year-old Mei Xiang and 25-year-old Tian Tian (also at the Zoo), are part of the Chinese breeding program that was established in the 1970s to bring back this magnificent species that was on the verge of extinction due to habitat loss and poaching. Pandas’ low reproductive rate makes them particularly vulnerable to threats and extinction. Twenty-six countries worldwide are currently involved in the program to help their proliferation. As a result, the giant panda is beginning to make a comeback (there are currently 1,864 left in the wild) and, as such, is labeled “vulnerable,” an upgrade from “endangered.” The global center of the nonprofit research and breeding facility is headquartered at the Chengdu Panda Base in China.

The future of Washington’s pandas is uncertain, however. Xiao Qi Ji arrived in the middle of contract negotiations with China. The pandas are owned by China and leased to the Zoo, costing $500k-$1million annually. The three pandas are slated to be returned to China in 2023.

If you’re planning to visit Xiao Qi Ji in the coming weeks, or even if you’re just watching him on the Giant Panda Cam, here’s a tip for visiting: he and his mother (with whom he shares his inside and outside area) tend to be most active early in the morning when the Zoo opens and in the early afternoon.

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