Panda Poop Paper

Hong Kong's new pandas will soon have official names, once the contest is complete and the winning handles are selected.

View large image The male and female are scheduled to arrive in late April or early May. Once they've adapted to their new home at Ocean Park, they'll be ready for public viewing by July 1, the 10th anniversary of the handover of Hong Kong to China.

No word on whether Ocean Park plans to recycle panda droppings into paper, as they do at Thailand's Chiang Mai Zoo.

From AP

... Thailand has come up with yet another, seemingly unlikely way to capitalize on this globally loved, bamboo-munching animal - panda poop.

When keepers of the country's panda couple - Chuang Chuang and Lin Hui - got tired of disposing the 55 pounds of feces daily produced by the duo, Prasertsak Buntragulpoontawee came up with the idea of turning it all into notebooks, fans, bookmarks and key chains.

"At first the Chinese were very skeptical," says the head of Chiang Mai Zoo's panda unit, referring to the proprietary attitude China takes toward its iconic animal.

But the multicolored paper products have proved hot selling-items at the zoo, with the 300,000 baht (US $8,200) earned to date helping balance the accounts of panda keeping.

The Thai government pays $250,000 a year to China's Wulong Panda Research Institute to rent the pandas, who, depending on the weather, reside in either a $1 million air-conditioned cage or an extensive, fan-cooled outdoor enclosure ringed by a mini-replica of China's Great Wall.

Panda poop paper production involves a daylong process of cleaning the feces, boiling it in a soda solution, bleaching it with chlorine and drying it under the sun. Experimentation continues on how to reduce the chemicals now used.

Prasertsak says he was inspired by sa paper, or mulberry leaf paper, a traditional, local product which has proved a highly popular gift item in recent years.

"We tried selling it on markets outside but so far with not so much success," he says. "But in the zoo, when people see real pandas and then their product they're excited and buy."

If Ocean Park decides to give panda-poop paper a shot, they could nickname the bears Pu Pu and Du Du.

Quit groaning, it's not like you didn't see that coming.

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