Kerre McIvor: Don't pander to cute appeal

A giant panda cub at Chengdu Research Base in Chengdu, China. Photo / Getty Images

Wellington City Council announced this week that it is looking at a business case for bringing giant pandas from China to Wellington Zoo.

Initially, there was a positive reaction from New Zealanders. A collective kind of "Ohhhhhhhhhhh" that generally precedes a "How cuuuuute!"

But then a councillor opposed to the project revealed that the great panda proposal could cost up to $100 million and Wellington ratepayers couldn't afford to fund that on their own.

Wellington would need taxpayers to cough up with the rest of the dosh and that's when even the most ardent panda fanciers began to have second thoughts.

I've never been into pandas. I simply don't see what the fuss is about.

To be fair, I have enjoyed a couple of videos on YouTube over the years. The mama panda who gets a fright when her baby sneezes always makes me smile and I'm one of the 10 million-plus people worldwide who has seen and enjoyed the four panda cubs swooshing down a slide at Chengdu Panda Base in China.

I do have my doubts about the provenance of that video. I'm no conspiracy theorist but I think those panda cubs are actually small people dressed up in panda suits.

Pandas never exert themselves. They live to eat and metabolise. That's why they have survived for seven million years. Sporty activity, like climbing up ladders and sliding down slides, would have rendered them extinct millennia ago.

Even accepting they're real - deep down I don't believe the panda cubs on the slides are little people in suits - I just don't see why half the Western world, and a considerable portion of the Eastern, goes gaga for them.

In their book Men and Pandas, published in the 1960s, zoologist Desmond Morris and his wife Ramona attributed the panda's popularity to 20 factors, about half of them due to the way they look.

They have flat faces and a soft appearance. They have attractive contrasting markings. They have baby-like body proportions and rounded outlines. And who could resist their soulful eyes?

When zoos score a pair of pandas, visitor numbers go through the roof. Some zoos can get up to 70 per cent more visitors in the first year of a panda loan.

That usually drops to a 10 per cent increase after three years, unless you get a cub. Then the numbers bounce back up again. But breeding a cub is even more difficult and costly than attaining its parents.

The main reason for panda loans is to grow the panda population but as most of us know, pandas aren't really into sex. Not in captivity they aren't.

Zoos around the world have tried all sorts of measures to get their pandas to mate: monitoring the pandas 20 hours a day, seven days a week, looking for the slightest inkling that the female may be on heat. Splashing urine from other male pandas around enclosures. They have even resorted to showing the animals panda porn with very little success. The problem is that females only come into season for one or two days per year. It's a tiny window of opportunity.

And speaking of tiny, male panda appendages are also tiny - totally out of proportion with the rest of their bodies. And, apparently, panda penises are winged, which brings its own particular set of problems.

In the wild, female pandas compensate for this by having sex with numerous partners multiple times - it's priapic panda-monium for a couple of days out there in the bush. If you're stuck in a cage and you have just one listless male to mate with, chances are there's going to be disappointment all round - for the male, the female and the people who run the zoo.

But even if zoos are blessed with a live birth, increased visitor numbers don't translate to increased revenue. Pandas come at an enormous cost. Ten years ago, the National Geographic quoted the cost of the Smithsonian's National Zoo hosting two giant pandas at $4m a year and even with increased visitor numbers and aggressive marketing - panda mugs in the gift shop, toy pandas, panda key rings - the National Zoo didn't collect enough revenue to offset costs.

And if the Smithsonian can't make money, and that's with the David M Rubenstein family paying for the Giant Panda Habitat, what hope does Wellington Zoo have?

We don't have many Rubenstein equivalents in this country to foot the cost of the palatial enclosures that hosting pandas requires.

Besides, if you go to see pandas at a zoo, in effect you'll be watching two inert blobs of black and white fluff through a glass pane. Might as well stay at home and watch them on the telly.

Now that the genetic diversity of pandas has improved, thanks in part to the panda loan scheme, surely the focus should be on creating safe habitats for pandas and returning them to the wild. That's where they belong.