Pandas Galore

Check out this beautiful slide show of the pandas at the Wolong Panda Reserve in China, and a fascinating photo series of a baby panda's development.

By Kathryn Hawkins. Posted on November 27 2007

For most of us, it’s a rare and enchanting treat just to see a single panda at the zoo. But what if you could get close up and personal with a huge group of pandas?

You can: All you have to do is make the trek to the Wolong Panda Reserve near Mount Quoinglai in China. Three hours away from the nearest town, the nearly 500,000-acre sanctuary is home to 150 pandas of all ages, along with an eclectic assortment of other endangered species, such as the golden monkey and the wildebeest.

The pandas, though, are the real stars of the show – and when you visit the sanctuary, you can even score an introduction to the friendliest pandas, whose enthusiasm might just knock you off your feet.

For some of us, China may be a little far to travel just to visit a few pandas, no matter how much we’d love to – but that’s okay. Now we can live vicariously through the Panda Land slide show, a series of photos from the sanctuary photographed and narrated by James Fallow, a wriiter for The Atlantic. Thanks to Fallow, we can watch the pandas play, sleep, climb trees, and simply lounge around, without facing the jetlag of an international flight. Check it out here.

And for an added bonus, you won’t want to miss the World Wildlife Foundation’s incredible photo series of a baby panda from birth until three months of age – you’d never recognize the blind, pink, and hairless newborn as the familiar panda he’ll soon become.

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