This is the moment a bored panda discovers a new plaything when a tourist dropped an umbrella into its enclosure.
The blue umbrella quickly ended up in the paws of a panda named Ji, which tried chewing it and poking it – and eventually accidentally opened it during the incident at their enclosure in Chengdu, which is a sub-provincial city and the capital of the Chinese province of Sichuan.
As the panda continued to play with the blue brolly, it attracted the attention of two other pandas that came over but it decided not to give up its plaything and even refused to let go of it when keepers lowered a net to try and scoop it up.
They are worried that the panda might try to eat some of the material or that the metal frame could somehow harm the panda.
Online commentators noted that the panda probably thought it was a typo of bamboo the way it seemed to be looking for a part of the umbrella that could be eaten before eventually giving up.
The Chengdu Research Base of Giant Panda Breeding, where the incident happened, is a public, non-profit breeding and research institute for giant pandas, red pandas, and other rare animals.
It was founded in 1987 by the Chengdu Municipal People’s Government and started with six giant pandas that were rescued from the wild. By 2008, it had 124 panda births, and the captive panda population has since grown to 83.
Its stated goal is to “be a world-class research facility, conservation education centre, and international educational tourism destination.”
