A panda keeper has been suspended by a Chinese zoo after a video of him cruelly poking the animal with a bamboo pole for laughing visitors emerged online.
The shocking footage – filmed at Ziqing Lake Wildlife World in Nanjing, Jiangsu Province – shows a panda happily munching on a bamboo shoot.
The footage – uploaded to Douyin, China’s version of TikTok – begins with panda Nuan Nuan sitting on the floor of an enclosure with its back against a low wall.
But as the animal tries to peacefully chew on its favourite food, the keeper begins poking in the head and back with a long bamboo pole.
Apparently encouraged by laughing spectators, he then sticks the pole under the panda’s backside and tries to lever it off the floor.
Nuan Nuan eventually gets to its feet but sits back down again moments later.
It later emerged that the keeper said he had been trying to get the panda out of the enclosure and back to its living quarters.
After the video surfaced, it caused widespread controversy, with many netizens demanding the worker be fired.
The zoo announced it had suspended the keeper immediately after seeing the footage and has banned him from ever working with pandas again.
The zoo said: “Love and patience are the most basic job requirements for our zoo to choose breeders, especially for the care of giant pandas, they should be comprehensive, serious, attentive, and caring.”
Nuan Nuan, who was born in August 2015 in Malaysia, arrived at Wildlife World in 2019, where it lives with seven other pandas.
To find out more about the author, editor or agency that supplied this story – please click below.
Story By: Simona Kitanovska, Sub-Editor: Marija Stojkoska, Agency: Asia Wire Report
The Ananova page is created by and dedicated to professional, independent freelance journalists. It is a place for us to showcase our work. When our news is sold to our media partners, we will include the link here.
