Some of our guests have recently been heard to exclaim “Hey! There’s two of them!” They are referring to our red pandas. Many of you know and are great fans of Toby, the World’s Cutest Animal. We recently acquired another panda, Take (pronounced Tah-Kay). Take came to us from the Red River Zoo in Fargo, North Dakota. He was the only male of a litter of triplets. It’s fairly unusual for red pandas to have three cubs, two being more common. Take is only a year old, although he is already almost a “grown up” in red panda terms. In the wild, red pandas are on their own and looking for their first mate at around 15 months old.
After Take had been here for a few weeks we decided to see what Toby and Take thought of one another. Pretty much they reacted as we anticipated. Toby, at nine years old, likes his nap time and wasn’t quite sure what this youngster was up to. Take, having just been separated from two rambunctious siblings, thought all red pandas wanted to play all day.
Fortunately, they seem to have come to an agreement in which Toby gets at least some of his nap time and Take occasionally gets Toby to engage in some chase sessions. They can be seen napping on the water fall together or searching for enrichment that the keepers have put out for them. If you stop by, you can distinguish Take because he is fluffier and has a lighter “strawberry blond” tail while Toby is darker with a “deep auburn” tail.
While I think we will all still agree that Toby is “The World’s Cutest Animal”, wouldn’t you say Take is a close second?
It’s a raccoon! It’s a cat! It’s…Toby! The adorable…panda? Well of course Toby is a panda, a red panda to be exact. And even though he doesn’t exactly look like the stereotypical, black and white idea of what we think a panda bear should look like (those ones are giant pandas), Toby can claim to have held the highly coveted title of panda first, at least as Westerners know it.
Cutest Animal in the World
Although the very first manuscript record of a red panda sighting was discovered within an ancient Chinese scroll dating back to the 1200s, the first time Europeans heard of the animal was in 1821. Thomas Hardwicke was the first to make mention of the red panda in the West, calling it first a “Wah,” because of the noises it makes, and then a “poonya,” a name he had brought back from Asia.
From there, “poonya” became known as “panda” as it evolved into the English language, and the rest is history. But perhaps the most significant detail of this history of the panda namesake is that it wasn’t until 1869 that any mention of the giant panda made its way to European consciousness. Therefore, the very first image that comes to most of our minds when someone says “panda”…is actually out of order in the grand scheme of things.
Toby
But hey, that’s okay – Toby’s a good sport about it. He just spends his days hanging around his enclosure in the Natural Encounters building, munching bamboo and fruit, watching all the people that have come to watch him. Yup, climbing trees and napping in a soft, bushy, blanket-like tail sure is the life. After all, Toby does hold one title that the giant panda hasn’t yet touched…he is officially the Cutest Animal in the World!
