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Hong Kong Launches Panda Sculpture Tour as the City Hopes the Bear Craze Boosts Tourism

Part of the 2500 panda sculptures are displayed at the Hong Kong International Airport during the welcome ceremony of the panda-themed exhibition "Panda Go!" in Hong Kong, Monday, Dec. 2, 2024. (AP)
Part of the 2500 panda sculptures are displayed at the Hong Kong International Airport during the welcome ceremony of the panda-themed exhibition "Panda Go!" in Hong Kong, Monday, Dec. 2, 2024. (AP)
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Hong Kong Launches Panda Sculpture Tour as the City Hopes the Bear Craze Boosts Tourism

Part of the 2500 panda sculptures are displayed at the Hong Kong International Airport during the welcome ceremony of the panda-themed exhibition "Panda Go!" in Hong Kong, Monday, Dec. 2, 2024. (AP)
Part of the 2500 panda sculptures are displayed at the Hong Kong International Airport during the welcome ceremony of the panda-themed exhibition "Panda Go!" in Hong Kong, Monday, Dec. 2, 2024. (AP)

Thousands of giant panda sculptures will greet residents and tourists starting Saturday in Hong Kong, where enthusiasm for the bears has grown since two cubs were born in a local theme park.

The 2,500 exhibits were showcased in a launch ceremony of PANDA GO! FEST HK, the city's largest panda-themed exhibition, at Hong Kong's airport on Monday. They will be publicly displayed at the Avenue of Stars in Tsim Sha Tsui, a popular shopping district, this weekend before setting their footprint at three other locations this month.

One designated spot is Ocean Park, home to the twin cubs, their parents and two other pandas gifted by Beijing this year. The design of six of the sculptures, made of recycled rubber barrels and resins among other materials, was inspired by these bears.

The displays reflect Hong Kong’s use of pandas to boost its economy as the Chinese financial hub works to regain its position as one of Asia’s top tourism destinations.

Pandas are considered China’s unofficial national mascot. The country’s giant panda loan program with overseas zoos has long been seen as a tool of Beijing’s soft-power diplomacy.

Hong Kong's tourism industry representatives are upbeat about the potential impact of housing six pandas, hoping to boost visitor numbers even though caring for pandas in captivity is expensive. Officials have encouraged businesses to capitalize on the popularity of the bears to seize opportunities in what some lawmakers have dubbed the “panda economy."

The organizer of the exhibitions also invited some renowned figures, including musician Pharrell Williams, to create special-edition panda designs. Most of these special sculptures will be auctioned online for charity and the proceeds will be donated to Ocean Park to support giant panda conversation efforts.

In a separate media preview event on Monday, the new pair of Beijing-gifted pandas, An An and Ke Ke, who arrived in September, appeared relaxed in their new home at Ocean Park. An An enjoyed eating bamboo in front of the cameras and Ke Ke climbed on an installation. They are set to meet the public on Sunday.

The twin cubs — whose birth in August made their mother Ying Ying the world’s oldest first-time panda mom — may meet visitors as early as February.

Ying Ying and the baby pandas' father, Le Le, are the second pair of pandas gifted by Beijing to Hong Kong since the former British colony returned to China’s rule in 1997.

The first pair were An An and Jia Jia who arrived in 1999. Jia Jia, who died at 38 in 2016, is the world’s oldest-ever panda to have lived in captivity.

The average lifespan for a panda in the wild is 14 to 20 years, while in captivity it’s up to 30 years, according to the World Wide Fund for Nature.

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Varieties

Scientists Gather to Decode Puzzle of the World’s Rarest Whale in ‘Extraordinary’ New Zealand Study

A handout photo taken on July 5, 2024 and received on July 16 from the New Zealand Department of Conservation shows rangers Jim Fyfe (L) and Tumai Cassidy walking beside what appears to be the carcass of a rare spade-toothed whale after it was discovered washed ashore on a beach near Taieri Mouth in New Zealand's southern Otago province. (Handout / New Zealand Department of Conservation / AFP)
A handout photo taken on July 5, 2024 and received on July 16 from the New Zealand Department of Conservation shows rangers Jim Fyfe (L) and Tumai Cassidy walking beside what appears to be the carcass of a rare spade-toothed whale after it was discovered washed ashore on a beach near Taieri Mouth in New Zealand's southern Otago province. (Handout / New Zealand Department of Conservation / AFP)
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Scientists Gather to Decode Puzzle of the World’s Rarest Whale in ‘Extraordinary’ New Zealand Study

A handout photo taken on July 5, 2024 and received on July 16 from the New Zealand Department of Conservation shows rangers Jim Fyfe (L) and Tumai Cassidy walking beside what appears to be the carcass of a rare spade-toothed whale after it was discovered washed ashore on a beach near Taieri Mouth in New Zealand's southern Otago province. (Handout / New Zealand Department of Conservation / AFP)
A handout photo taken on July 5, 2024 and received on July 16 from the New Zealand Department of Conservation shows rangers Jim Fyfe (L) and Tumai Cassidy walking beside what appears to be the carcass of a rare spade-toothed whale after it was discovered washed ashore on a beach near Taieri Mouth in New Zealand's southern Otago province. (Handout / New Zealand Department of Conservation / AFP)

It is the world’s rarest whale, with only seven of its kind ever spotted. Almost nothing is known about the enigmatic species. But on Monday a small group of scientists and cultural experts in New Zealand clustered around a near-perfectly preserved spade-toothed whale hoping to decode decades of mystery.

“I can’t tell you how extraordinary it is,” said a joyful Anton van Helden, senior marine science adviser for New Zealand’s conservation agency, who gave the spade-toothed whale its name to distinguish it from other beaked species. “For me personally, it’s unbelievable.”

Van Helden has studied beaked whales for 35 years, but Monday was the first time he has participated in a dissection of the spade-toothed variety. In fact, the careful study of the creature -- which washed up dead on a New Zealand beach in July — is the first ever to take place.

None has ever been seen alive at sea.

The list of what scientists don’t know about spade-toothed whales is longer than what they do know. They don’t know where in the ocean the whales live, why they’ve never been spotted in the wild, or what their brains look like. All beaked whales have different stomach systems and researchers don’t know how the spade-toothed kind processes its food. They don’t know how this one died.

Over the next week, researchers studying the 5-meter (16-foot) -long male at an agricultural research center near the city of Dunedin hope to find out.

“There may be parasites completely new to science that just live in this whale,” said van Helden, who thrilled at the chance of learning how the species produces sound and what it eats. “Who knows what we’ll discover?”

Only six other spade-toothed whales have ever been found, but all those discovered intact were buried before DNA testing could verify their identification.

New Zealand is a whale-stranding hotspot, with more than 5,000 episodes recorded since 1840, according to the Department of Conservation. The first spade-toothed whale bones were found in 1872 on New Zealand’s Pitt Island. Another discovery was made at an offshore island in the 1950s, and the bones of a third were found on Chile’s Robinson Crusoe Island in 1986.

DNA sequencing in 2002 proved that all three specimens were of the same species — and that it was distinct from other beaked whales. But researchers studying the mammal couldn’t confirm whether the species was extinct until 2010, when two whole spade-toothed whales, both dead, washed up on a New Zealand beach. But none has been studied before.

On Monday, the seventh of its kind, surrounded by white-aproned scientists who were measuring and photographing, appeared relatively unblemished, giving no clue about its death. Researchers pointed out marks from cookiecutter sharks — normal, they said, and not the cause.

The dissection will be quiet, methodical and slower than usual, because it is being undertaken in partnership with Māori, New Zealand's Indigenous people. To Māori, whales are a taonga -– a precious treasure -– and the creature will be treated with the reverence afforded to an ancestor.

Members of the local iwi, or tribe, will be present throughout the dissection and consulted at each turn, allowing them to share traditional knowledge and observe customs, such as saying a karakia -– a prayer -– over the creature before the study begins.

“According to our beliefs and our traditions, this whale is a gift of Tangaroa, deity of the ocean,” said Tumai Cassidy from the local people Te Rūnanga Ōtākou. “It’s very important for us to respect that gift and to honor the whale.”

The iwi will keep the jawbone and teeth of the whale at the end of the dissection, before its skeleton is displayed in a museum. 3D printing will be used to replicate those parts, using a CT scan taken of the whale’s head this week.

“It all builds a richer picture for that species but also tells us how it interacts with our oceans,” Cassidy said.

It’s thought that spade-toothed whales live in the vast Southern Pacific Ocean, home to some of the world’s deepest ocean trenches. Beaked whales are the ocean's deepest divers for food, and the spade-toothed may rarely surface, adding to its mystery.

The assembled scientists on Monday included a few who had traveled from abroad to see the whale, which was put in refrigerated storage after its discovery.

“What we are interested in is not only how these animals died, but how they lived,” said Joy Reidenberg, a comparative anatomist from the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York. “In discovering how they live, we are hoping to find discoveries that we can apply back to the human condition.”