Tree-top Standoffs and Sleepless Nights: A Terp Insider’s View on Giant Pandas

Caring for a day-old panda cub takes more than just feeding, weighing and nesting. For Brandie Smith Ph.D. ’10, tending to Bao Bao in 2013 required planning a “Mission Impossible”-esque distract-and-grab maneuver with her team to temporarily pull the baby from protective mom Mei Xiang for a checkup, all to ensure the health of one of the most visible vulnerable species in the world. 

There’s a lot of general information out there, but nobody has told the story about what it’s like to hold a panda cub in your hand. I wanted to tell the story from a first-person perspective, to help people see pandas through my eyes. A lot of people dream about this, working with animals or pandas. 

Pandas are such celebrities, but people see them as two-dimensional. I get a lot of the same questions all the time, so I wanted to answer those.

Why are pandas so cute? Why do we love pandas so much? I’m a nerdy scientist, so in the book, I share why I think they’re cute, but also the science behind awe and cuteness.

I always get questions about food too, like how much bamboo they eat. There’s a whole chapter literally dedicated to nothing but eating and pooping. 

It was a little moment, but it made me laugh. Bao Bao, who was the first baby born when I was curator, so she was special to me. She was growing up the same time as my daughter. Bao Bao was so independent, and she would go out into the yard and climb a tree and just sit there. We would wait, sometimes all night for her to come down. One day, we needed her to come in — I think a storm was coming — and we were doing everything we could to call her. We’re like, “Mei Xiang, go get your baby!” But Mei Xiang was having her mom time. So I had to go out and climb a ladder, because Bao Bao was kind of high up there. 

I remember Bao Bao looking at me. She seemed to be amused by the fact that I had to do this. I thought, “It’ll be easy!,” but those little buggers can really hold on. It was a moment of biological epiphany about how good they are at climbing trees. It was surreal: I’m at work right now, tons of people are watching, and they’ve all got cameras out filming the moment. 

It’s always about breeding. People say we should just let pandas go extinct if they can’t reproduce. That drives me crazy. The reality is, pandas as a species have been on the planet for millions of years, so clearly they can reproduce. But their reproductive strategy is very fine-tuned to their climate and their diet, and it doesn’t do well with human pressures, like habitat destruction and climate change. They were doing fine, but we messed them up. 

Another one is that people just see sweet softness. They don’t understand that we don’t cuddle them. They are bears. They are carnivores. People are like, what? They eat bamboo. But they are in the order carnivora, and they are true bears. They’ve just evolved to eat bamboo and not meat, but bamboo is really tough. They have the same bite force as lions or tigers, and they have strong jaw muscles for crushing bamboo. 

We know from the moment pandas are born they will go back to China for the breeding program. I liken it to the difference between a pet and a child: A pet you’ll have for the rest of its life, but a child, you understand that success mean they are going to go off and be independent and have a family of their own. 

Usually, when a panda went away, we could go back to the panda house and see other pandas. But this time, after they left, there was just this quietness, this melancholy sadness. We were preparing to say it could be two years without pandas, but as we talked to our Chinese colleagues about the 50 years of breeding and conservation success, a year went by so fast. [New pandas Bao Li and Qing Bao arrived in January 2025.]

It was such a fancy event. But I’m a scientist, and I’m used to talking about all the various parts of animals and the reproductive process. I’m trying to explain to the person next to me why Mei Xiang and Tian Tian had trouble reproducing, because they never assumed the correct breeding posture. Her head would be down, and she would kind of pancake, and he would just step on her. 

I’m using my hands, and through my them, I see Nancy Pelosi and Chris O’Donnell looking at me. And in my head, I’m like, “Don’t say vagina, don’t say vagina.” But I had to tell the story! You can dress me up, but you can’t take me out. 

You think you know how adorable a baby elephant is, but it’s nothing until you see one. To be there for the whole process, to witness her birth, to go through for those first fearful moments [when the calf was rejected by her mother]. Hand-raising a baby elephant, it’s not a given you will succeed. The fact that we were able to figure out this formula from Australia that was the key to her gaining weight, the fact that we did a microbiome [aka poop] transfer from an elephant calf in Ohio from the Columbus Zoo. Introducing her to a foster mom, which is rare. She and Swarna, they’re so adorable together. It’s just been a joy to watch her grow and to be part of this incredible team that has made this work. 

As awesome as they are, the eyes of the world are watching. If I make a mistake, it’s an international incident. When you’re dealing with living beings, things can go wrong anytime, even if you do everything right. There are so few pandas left on the planet. This is not only a scientific program, but a diplomatic program. 

As part of having pandas at the zoo, we pay a million dollars a year. Every time someone comes and buys a stuffed panda — or a copy of my book — that money goes toward conservation. We work closely with colleagues in China to not just increase our understanding of pandas, but conservation in the field. For example, the person who figured out how to breed endangered species to maximize genetic variability was a Smithsonian scientist.

Some of the things we’re working on now is better understanding behavior and physiology. Pandas are dependent on bamboo forests, right? But with climate change, these forests are actually moving. In China, they are doing an incredible job of saving habitat, but what habitat do you save? The habitat you save now, is that the best habitat 50 years from now? Our scientists are working on sustainability, not just now, but into the future.