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The panda is the most beloved animal on the planet, a face engineered by evolution to look like a cartoon and adopted by the world as a symbol of cuteness, fragility, and goodwill. From Su Lin's 1930s celebrity to panda-cams, viral cubs, and Kung Fu Panda, it is pop culture's favourite bear.
Part of The Giant Panda
5 moments in this segment.
- - The birth of the panda celebrity. With Su Lin's arrival the panda becomes the first true animal celebrity of the media age, splashed across newsreels and magazines, mobbed by crowds, merchandised into toys. The peculiar charm of a roly-poly black-and-white bear that sits up and eats like a person makes it irresistible.
- - A face built to be adored. The panda triggers what ethologists call the "baby schema", big head, round face, large eye-patches that read as huge eyes, a clumsy gait. Konrad Lorenz argued such features hijack the human instinct to nurture. Evolution made a bear that the whole species is helpless to resist.
- - Tai Shan and the panda-cam era. When Tai Shan is born at the National Zoo in July 2005, the zoo's "panda-cam" turns him into an internet phenomenon, watched by millions online. The live-streamed cub is a new kind of celebrity, proof that the panda has conquered the web as thoroughly as it once conquered the newsreel.
- - Kung Fu Panda. DreamWorks' Kung Fu Panda makes the bumbling, noodle-loving panda Po a global box-office star and spawns a franchise. The film cements the panda's place as pop culture's favourite bear, clumsy, lovable, and unmistakably itself.
- - Cubs in front of the new year backdrop. Twenty-nine cubs were held up by their keepers in front of Lunar New Year backdrops for the annual photocall in China. The presentation is now a fixture of the festive news cycle around the world.
