While China doesn’t always have the greatest track record with animals, keepers at the Hetaoping Research and Conservation Centre in western China dress up in fluffy panda costumes to help prepare captive-born cubs to live in the wild.
The dedicated conservationists are anxious to ensure the endangered animals have as little contact with humans as possible, thus they dress up as the black and white bears, reports the Daily Mail.
Rather than being hand-reared, the little pandas are being brought up by their mothers in a piece of protected woodland.
Every move by the baby pandas is monitored by CCTV and help is always at hand. Their keepers can see in a moment if they need medicine or a health check-up.
See pictures below
More from Bangalore Mirror.
Animal imprinting (where humans are involved) can have a negative impact for an animal’s entire life. According to the website animalbehaviour.net imprinting can be defined as follows: “Imprinting is said to occur when innate behaviours are released in response to a learnt stimulus. Most imprinting promotes survival of newborn animals and shapes their future breeding activities. Imprinting has a number of characteristics.”