Panda Cub ‘Lu Lu Zi’ Dies After Strangulation Due to Climbing Rope Entanglement
On April 10th evening, the official Weibo account of the China Giant Panda Protection Research Center released a message: On that day, the panda “Lu Lu Zi” (born August 10, 2019, female) died of strangulation due to the climbing rope entangled around its neck at the Shenshiping Base.
Around 2:00 AM on April 9th, “Lu Lu Zi” climbed onto a wooden frame with hanging toys in the outdoor playground of the Shenshiping Base kindergarten alone, and then the cub tied the rope of the hanging toy around its body and began to struggle. Within a few minutes, the cub stopped struggling and unfortunately died.
Due to the late night of the incident and the difficulty in distinguishing between “Lu Lu Zi’s” resting posture with the climbing rope and the posture of being suspended on the wooden frame, the night patrol personnel failed to discover the abnormality.
In the morning of April 9th, the management of the Shenshiping Base kindergarten’s kindergarten feeding point first checked the cubs in the visiting channel, seeing that most panda cubs were resting and did not find any abnormalities. The staff explained that at that time, “Lu Lu Zi” was facing away from the visiting area and could not see its face clearly, so it looked like it was suspended on the wooden frame.
The keeper only discovered that “Lu Lu Zi” had the hanging toy rope wrapped around its neck and forelimbs at around 9:00 AM on April 9th after entering the cat enclosure playground. Through contact and observation, it was initially judged to be dead, and then notified the veterinarian, after which the veterinarian examined and confirmed that the cub had been dead for a period of time, and subsequently collected samples for testing.
The China Giant Panda Protection Research Center stated that it deeply lamented the departure of the giant panda “Lu Lu Zi”. This incident also made it fully aware that there were certain omissions in the safety management of young giant pandas. The center will draw lessons from this incident, further strengthen the safety inspection and assessment of enriching items for young giant pandas, and thoroughly eliminate security hazards in the park; at the same time, strengthen night patrol duty, to avoid the occurrence of such incidents.
201931350%4182124
