Panda Daycare Is The Cutest Thing You’ll See Today

Pandas have been given a hard time over the years for not being all that useful, evolutionarily speaking. They’re not great breeders and they kinda just hang around all day eating bamboo and chilling. Frankly, that sounds like the perfect life to me and I think pandas are beautiful creatures and the more of them there are, the better. Thankfully, the Chengdu Research Base of Giant Panda Breeding agrees and they’re running a full-blown panda daycare to prop numbers. 

1. The panda population in China has been dwindling for a while. There are many reasons for this, one of the main ones being captive pandas’ inability to breed very well. However, the Chengdu Research Base of Giant Panda Breeding‘s efforts are paying off and they have enough baby pandas that panda daycare is a necessity at the facility. 
2. The conservation efforts started nearly 30 years ago. The base, which is located in the Chenghua District of Chengdu, Sichuan Province, China, began in the 1980s when researchers rescued six very ill and malnourished pandas. They built the base as a place for the pandas to live and since then, they’ve successfully bred over 150 pandas. That’s pretty impressive!
3. You can even visit the base! The base is a non-profit that offers conservation tours to thousands of guests every year, so if you’re ever in Chengdu, you’ll definitely want to stop by. In addition to seeing the pandas themselves, you also get to tour the beautiful grounds full of amazing foliage and other remarkable landscapes. Plus, there are plenty of other endangered wildlife species there such as “red pandas, swans, peacocks, birds, butterflies, and hundreds of insects.” Admission only costs 58 RMB, which is about $8.32. TAKE ME THERE!
4. The baby pandas do eventually graduates from daycare. When they’re really tiny, the pandas get ’round the clock care from the base’s staff. As they grow, they’re moved to panda kindergarten, which is a bigger outdoor nature space that they can explore and grow in. Once they reach a certain age, they’re moved on to other nature reserves so that a new batch of baby panda cubs can move in.
5. The base’s work will help preserve the species in years to come. Their efforts to conserve pandas have made a massive difference to the species already and will hopefully continue forever. In the meantime, let’s all get to Chengdu so we can see panda daycare in action!