By: Hannah Yang

An An, a panda, a resident of Hong Kong’s Ocean Park, was known for being feisty, playful, and, most importantly, the oldest panda in captivity. An An died-on Thursday due to severe health problems at age 35, 105 in human age.

Hong Kong’s Ocean Park’s Facebook page announced the world’s oldest panda officially died of euthanasia. A few weeks before his death, he was experiencing problems with physical activities and food intake, leading to his inevitable death. In the last few days of his life, he refused to eat solid foods and would only consume water and electrolytes, and his diet dropped drastically from a regular giant panda’s diet.

In 1999, An An arrived at the Hong Kong Zoo with another panda named Jia Jia. She was listed in the Guinness World Records for oldest pandas, as she was 35 when she passed away in 2016. For context, the average life span of a giant panda is about 14 to 20 years old, and pandas in captivity rarely make it over 30. One year in a panda’s age equals roughly three human years. Therefore, if a panda lived to 30, it would be approximately 90 years old, which is the average age for humans.

Jin Yu Young of the NY Times wrote, “While giant pandas were listed as endangered in 1990 by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature, the organization reclassified the bears as “vulnerable” in 2016. Last year, there were about 1,800 giant pandas in the wild in China and 500 in captivity worldwide. There are concerns about the conservation of the animals because of the destruction of their natural habitats, including the Yangtze Basin region in China, from infrastructure development, forest loss, and climate change.”

As the news of An An’s death spread, people expressed their sympathies online and in public. The chairman of Hong Kong’s Ocean Park said: “An An brought us all heartwarming memories, and his playfulness and cleverness will always be dearly missed.”

Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/21/world/asia/an-an-giant-panda-dead.html