The Unusual Difficulty Of Photographing Pandas

A giant panda cub lies on the grass at the Bifengxia Giant Panda Breeding and Research Center in China's Sichuan Province.

Three panda cubs are being raised by the same mother at the Bifengxia centre. Transferring a weak or rejected infant from its birth mother to a surrogate is helping to boost cub survival.

Three-month-old cubs nap in the panda nursery at Bifengxia. A panda mother that bears twins usually fails to give them equal attention. Keepers reduce the load by regularly swapping cubs in and out—making sure each gets both human and panda-mom care.

Panda keeper Liu Juan interacts with a pair of panda cubs as tourists look in at the Bifengxia Giant Panda Breeding and Research Center.

Blind, nearly hairless, squeaky, and 1/900 the size of its mother. But it won’t be for long. The panda is among the fastest growing mammals, increasing from around four ounces to four pounds in its first month.

A panda mother that bears twins usually fails to give them equal attention. Keepers at Bifengxia reduce the load by regularly swapping cubs in and out—making sure each gets both human and panda-mom care.

Baby pandas wean from their mothers between 8-9 months and a year old and generally stay with their mothers for 2 years.

Panda keeper Zhang Xin weighs a panda cub at the Bifengxia Giant Panda Breeding and Research Center.. ‘We look every day at the adults, the babies, how much they are eating, what their poo looks like, if their spirit is good. We just want them to be healthy,' she says.

A mother panda cradles her cub inside the Bifengxia centre.

A pair of panda cubs interacts while being cared for at Bifengxia.

Six month old pandas play at the Dujiangyan Panda Center. At one year old, babies are brought here to buddy up. These pandas will spend their lives in captivity. In the wild, giant pandas prefer to live alone.

Ying Hua is photographed with her baby at the Bifengxia Giant Panda Breeding and Research Center.

A pair of panda cubs practice climbing in and out of trees at the Wolong China Conservation & Research Center for the Giant Panda. Pandas born here do not interact with humans in hopes they will be able to live in the wild.

Six month old pandas munch on carrots at the Dujiangyan Panda Center.

A cub explores her enclosure at Wolong.

YeYe and her two-year-old cub Hua Jiao explore their enclosure at Wolong. Away from human influence, YeYe will gradually train her cub to survive in the wild.

A mother and her cub play inside an enclosure at Wolong. The cub is being trained to go back into the wild but must be deemed fit to survive on its own, including being able to recognise predators.

Camouflaged by a bamboo thicket, a giant panda will spend much of the day surrounded by and munching on its favourite food at Bifengxia. Pandas used to eat both meat and plants. At least two million years ago, their diet shifted to bamboo.