Vanessa's Journal

Jan. 11

Today I stayed back and worked on more of my reading.  The team went out and made another trap.  We had a nice celebratory dinner, as they will all be leaving tomorrow in the afternoon after putting the finishing touches on the third trap.  It’s been nice having them up here and I know they worked really hard, so it is sort of sad to see them go. 

Jan. 12

Today I checked traps with Lao Yang while the rest of the team finished the third new trap.  Our trap checking included the two newest traps that were just built.  I was impressed with them.  I think they are in good locations.  One of them is only about 20 meters from recent feces and the other is in a central ‘animal trail’ location.  So I have hope for both of them. They are both at Jianpengzi.  It was nice to get out and hike again.  I saw and heard a few birds, but other than that it was pretty quiet. The trail was pretty slippery today, I think there was some frozen rain last night and it started to snow while we were walking.  Lao Yang thinks there will be a big snow tonight and that it will help our trapping efforts.  We’ll see. 

So now we have a total of 10 traps. Six of them are wooden and three are metal  We also discussed this afternoon the need for upping the amount of meat at each cage.  The guys have said that they think one disadvantage of trapping in the winter is that because it is not as humid, the smell of the meat doesn’t travel as far, so I think we are going to just do our best by adding more meat and spreading it out some. Currently the configuration consists of pieces of meat in a triangle configuration around the trap (20 m in each direction) with some meat in the cage and also some right outside of it on the trail. Lao Yang is going to go down the mountain tomorrow and order three new goats for this purpose, so I think we will be all set. 

Now would perhaps be a good time to clear up some confusion that may exist regarding the use of meat to trap pandas.  Yes, pandas are herbivorous by their behavior, in that they eat over 95 percent bamboo. However, they do like meat and are reportedly attracted to the smell of it.  I think this is related to the fact that technically they have digestive tracts that resemble that of a carnivore’s and it is thought that millions of years ago they originally did eat meat but switched over to bamboo at some unknown point.  They have evolved to eat bamboo so they have adaptations like a specialized wrist bone for gripping it, but yet they don’t have the correct muscle and bone configuration for running fast to hunt for other animals. They are known for having incredibly strong scent glands (multiple times stronger than that of humans), so we are relying on their ability to smell the meat we put out from a ways away and come to check it out.